A place stripped bare by coal mining has yielded a bacterium that may help plants grow. It is not just another soil microbe: its traits suggest a possible ally for rebuilding damaged land. Bare soils left after open-cast mining are one of the unexplored ecosystems shaped by human activity.

They offer a chance to study how life returns to severely altered ground. In the Sokolov coal-mining area, exposed Miocene clays are either reclaimed or left to recover on their own. These specialized clays harbor distinct, diverse microorganisms and may hold unexplored microbial diversity.

Among the organisms recovered from this setting was one isolate whose color and soluble pigment pattern distinguished it from other isolates. Later genome comparisons confirmed that it occupied a distinct position among related bacteria.

That evidence supported recognizing a species represented by this single isolate. Its closest relatives include a plant-associated bacterium and bacteria reported to cause potato scab lesions. The family tree built from genetic sequences placed the isolate on a stable, distinct branch alongside its closest reference strains.

Two separate ways of building that tree reached the same conclusion. The important idea is like checking a family relationship with two independent family trees: when both agree, the placement is more convincing. Here, the critical branches were strongly supported and consistent across the analyses.

Whole-genome comparisons confirmed that the isolate was distinct from its closest neighbors. The similarity values stayed below the boundary used to decide whether bacteria belong to the same species. The genome-wide identity values were also below the species boundary.

Together with the organism’s visible traits, these results supported recognizing a separate species within Streptomyces. The isolate had the highest number of unique genes linked to plant-growth-promoting traits among the genomes compared. No association with potato pathogenicity was predicted in its genome.

The genetic comparisons and the organism’s traits distinguished it from closely related strains. The proposed name for this species is Streptomyces chodovensis. The bacterium forms pink-to-brown substrate growth and dense white-to-gray aerial growth, along with a pink-orange soluble pigment.

The bacterium grows across temperatures from four to thirty degrees Celsius, with its best growth occurring at twenty-eight degrees Celsius overall. It can use several simple food sources, including glycerol, mannose, and xylose, but it cannot use cellulose, fructose, or ribose at all.

The laboratory tests showed that the bacterium can make soluble protein-cutting enzymes, a plant-related growth compound, and can release phosphate from an insoluble form. It did not produce iron-grabbing compounds in the test, despite genetic predictions suggesting that it might.

But it was the only strain tested that produced hydrocyanic acid. This microscopic view reveals the organism’s defining form: long, branching threads carrying spores, while the growing colony forms a distinctive pale, textured patch. Together, these shapes support recognizing it as a distinct species rather than just another soil microbe.

The type strain was isolated from bare soil in the Sokolov Coal Basin of the Czech Republic. That origin matters because the organism came from land altered by mining, not from a managed agricultural field. Its genetic sequence and whole-genome project were deposited in public scientific databases, allowing other researchers to examine and compare the evidence.

Streptomyces chodovensis is a newly recognized soil bacterium with several plant-supporting activities and no predicted potato disease link. It could help researchers search damaged soils for useful partners for plants.