Wickerhamiella shiruii S. Hu, Q. Y. Zhu & F. Y. Bai, 2025

Hu, Shuang, Zhu, Qi-Yang, Zhu, Hai-Yan, Liu, Jun-Yu, Shi, Yue, Qiu, Yan-Jie, Wen, Zhang, Li, Ai-Hua, Han, Pei-Jie & Bai, Feng-Yan, 2025, Yeast diversity in traditional fermented foods of ethnic minorities in China, with the descriptions of four new yeast species, IMA Fungus 16, pp. e 146163-e 146163 : e146163-

publication ID	https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.16.146163
DOI	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15851344
persistent identifier	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/091A715E-7211-594E-8537-900192697F07
treatment provided by	by Pensoft
scientific name	Wickerhamiella shiruii S. Hu, Q. Y. Zhu & F. Y. Bai
status	sp. nov.

Treatment

Wickerhamiella shiruii S. Hu, Q. Y. Zhu & F. Y. Bai sp. nov.

Etymology.

shi. ru’ii. N. L. gen. sing. n. shiruii of Shiru, referring to Shiru Jia at Tianjin University of Science and Technology in recognition of his contributions to the research on traditional fermented foods in China.

Type.

CHINA • Jilin Province, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, 43.0663°N, 128.8593°E, from rice wine made by Korean nationality, June 2023, Q. Y. Zhu. The holotype CGMCC 2.7449 View Materials (original number JLY 21-1) has been preserved in a metabolically inactive state in the China General Microbiological Culture Collection Center ( CGMCC), Beijing, China. An extype culture has been deposited in the Japan Collection of Microorganisms ( JCM), Koyadai, Japan, as JCM 36917 View Materials . GenBank accessions: ITS - PQ 373577 and LSU- PP 192712 . The raw genome data of CGMCC 2.7449 View Materials has been deposited in GenBank under the BioSample accession numbers SAMN 47538174 GoogleMaps .

Culture characteristics.

After growth on YM agar for 5 days at 25 ° C, colonies are white and villous, with a rough surface and irregular margins. Cells are circular to ovoid, 3–3.5 × 3.5–6 µm. Budding is multilateral. Pseudohyphae consist of elongated cells that are formed (Fig. 7 c View Figure 7 ). After 4 weeks in YM broth at 25 ° C, sediment and pellicle are formed. After growth on YCB / PDA agar for 2 weeks at 25 ° C, oval or elongated cells (3.5–5 × 4.5–24 µm) and probably oil droplets are formed (Fig. 7 d View Figure 7 ). The sexual stage was not detected.

Physiological characteristics of the new species are listed in Table 2 View Table 2 .

Notes.

Physiologically, W. shiruii differs from its closest relative, W. pararugosa , in the utilization of inulin and ethylamine and growth on 50 % glucose in vitaminfree medium and 10 % NaCl plus 5 % glucose medium and at 40–42 ° C (Suppl. material 1: table S 3). A total of 47 species are currently accepted in the genus Wickerhamiella ; the ecological distribution of them is mostly associated with flowers, insects, fruits, and foliage, with some instances of isolation from anthropic environments such as wineries, alcoholic beverages, and even human sources ( Liu et al. 2016; Belloch et al. 2020; Sakpuntoon et al. 2020). Wickerhamiella species may occur in specific regions, such as the Neotropics and Asia, or exhibit cosmopolitan distribution ( Goncalves et al. 2020). It seems that W. shiruii commonly exists in specific alcoholic beverages and fermented dairy products. Among the 17 non-Chinese strains that are conspecific with the type strain CGMCC 2.7449 of the new species isolated in this study, 13 were isolated from various fermented dairy products in different countries located on different continents, suggesting a worldwide distribution of the new species in fermented foods. A prominent feature of W. shiruii is its ability to grow at 42 ° C, which is a rare trait in this genus ( Avchar et al. 2019). In addition, many oil droplet-like structures were observed in the cells of W. shiruii , implying the potential of the new species as an oleaginous yeast to produce micro-biodiesel ( Salvador López et al. 2022; Zhao et al. 2023).

Distribution.

China, Slovakia, Egypt, Turkey, Holland, the Czech Republic, Iran, Australia, Mexico, Algeria, Finland, and Italy.