Litoricolaceae fam. nov., to include Litoricola lipolytica gen. nov., sp. nov., a marine bacterium belonging to the order Oceanospirillales.

A Gram-negative, non-motile, chemoheterotrophic, facultatively aerobic, short-rod-shaped bacterium, designated IMCC1097(T), was isolated from coastal seawater (10 m depth) of the East Sea, Korea. The temperature, pH and NaCl ranges for growth were 15-30 degrees C, pH 5.0-10.0 and 1.5-10 % NaCl. The colonies of the strain were very small, having a mean diameter of 0.05 mm. 16S rRNA gene sequence data indicated that the strain was most closely related to genera within the class Gammaproteobacteria. Members of the most closely related genera showed less than 90 % sequence similarity and included Saccharospirillum (89.3 %), Oleiphilus (88.7 %), Reinekea (88.2 %), Alcanivorax (86.4-87.6 %) and Zooshikella (87.6 %), which represent five different families of the order Oceanospirillales. Phylogenetic analyses showed that this marine strain represented a distinct phylogenetic lineage in the order Oceanospirillales and could not be assigned to any of the defined families in the order. The predominant fatty acids were C(16 : 1) omega 7c and/or iso-C(15 : 0) 2-OH, C(18 : 1) omega 7c and C(10 : 0) 3-OH, and the DNA G+C content was 57.9 mol%. These chemotaxonomic properties, together with phenotypic characteristics, served to differentiate the strain from phylogenetically closely related genera. The very low sequence similarities (<90 %) and distant relationships between IMCC1097(T) and members of the order Oceanospirillales suggested that the strain merited classification within a novel genus within a novel family in the order. On the basis of taxonomic evidence collected in this study, a novel genus and species are proposed, Litoricola lipolytica gen. nov., sp. nov., within a new family Litoricolaceae fam. nov. Strain IMCC1097(T) (=KCCM 42360(T) =NBRC 102074(T)) is the type strain of Litoricola lipolytica.