Sinorhizobium


Sinorhizobium/Ensifer is a genus of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, three of which have been sequenced.

Etymology

Sinorhizobium is a combination of Medieval Latin sino, Greek rhizo, and New Latin bios. Thus, the generic name means "a bacterium living in a root in China". The other name is from the New Latin term ensifer, which means "sword-bearing" or "sword-bearer".

Proper name

The name Ensifer was published in 1982 and the name Sinorhizobium was published in 1988. By the rules of the Bacteriological Code of the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes, the older name has priority. In response to a request that the single extant species of Ensifer be moved to Sinorhizobium, a special ICSP subcommittee was formed to evaluate the request. It was ultimately ruled that Ensifer retained priority and that all Sinorhizobium species be transferred to the genus Ensifer. However, both terms continue to be used in published scientific literature, with Sinorhizobium being the more common.

Deprecated species

Two species have been described which have since been reclassified into existing species: Sinorhizobium morelense and Sinorhizobium xinjiangense.

Phylogeny

The currently accepted taxonomy is based on the List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature and National Center for Biotechnology Information
and the phylogeny is based on 16S rRNA-based LTP release 106 by The All-Species Living Tree Project