Pedobacter

{{Short description|Genus of bacteria}}

{{Automatic taxobox

| taxon = Pedobacter

| authority = Steyn et al. 1998

| subdivision_ranks = Species

| subdivision = See text

}}

Pedobacter is a genus of Gram-negative soil-associated bacteria. Species including Pedobacter heparinus, formerly known as Flavobacterium heparinum, produce heparinase and are capable of using heparin as their sole carbon and nitrogen source.{{cite journal|last1=Shaya|first1=D|title=Crystal structure of heparinase II from Pedobacter heparinus and its complex with a disaccharide product|journal=J. Biol. Chem.|date=2006|volume=281|issue=22|pages=15525–35|pmid=16565082|doi=10.1074/jbc.m512055200|doi-access=free}}

In molecular biology, Pedobacter has also been identified as a contaminant of DNA extraction kit reagents and ultra-pure water systems, which may lead to its erroneous appearance in microbiota or metagenomic datasets.{{cite bioRxiv|last1=Salter|first1=S|last2=Cox|first2=M|last3=Turek|first3=E|last4=Calus|first4=S|last5=Cookson|first5=W|last6=Moffatt|first6=M|last7=Turner|first7=P|last8=Parkhill|first8=J|last9=Loman|first9=N|last10=Walker|first10=A|author6-link=Miriam Moffatt|author8-link=Julian Parkhill|author9-link=Nick Loman|title=Reagent contamination can critically impact sequence-based microbiome analyses|date=2014|biorxiv=10.1101/007187}}