The species Rhizorhabdus wittichii, formerly Sphingomonas wittichii, is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped motile bacterium, with an optimum growth temperature at 30 °C.[2] It forms a greyish white colony.[3] It has been found to have a 67 mol% of DNA G+C content.[3]
The R. wittichii RW1 genome consists of 5,915,246 bp and consists of a single circular chromosome and two plasmids.[4]
It was first isolated from water of the River Elbe by R.-M. Wittich, after whom the species is named.[2]
The species was originally thought to belong to the genus Sphingomonas, despite poor alignment of its 16S rRNA gene with its putative nearest neighbor.[5] It has since been reclassified to Rhizorhabdus as part of a larger re-evaluation of Alphaproteobacteria.[6]
R. wittichii RW1 is notable for metabolisingdibenzo-p-dioxin and phenazine-1-carboxylic acid.[8] In fact, Sphingomonas wittichii strain RW1 (RW1) is one of the very few strains that can grow on dibenzo-p-dioxin (DD).[9] Furthermore, this bacterium also grows on dibenzofuran and 4-chloro-dibenzofuran, using them as the sole carbon sources.[9] Such biodegradative capabilities are not unique to this strain.
R. wittichii MPO218 degrades ibuprofen, carrying degradative genes on a large plasmid.[10] Thanks to its wide-ranging metabolic capabilities and likely propensity to acquire novel degradation genes, in no small part due to its wealth of plasmids,[11]
The unusual arrangement of its genes involved in dioxin degradation, and the full description of the dioxin degradation pathway, is still under investigation.
This organism holds a high potential for biotechnological applications.[5]
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