Shewanella haliotis sp. nov., isolated from the gut microflora of abalone, Haliotis discus hannai.

A motile, rod-shaped, pink-orange pigmented bacterium, designated strain DW01(T), was isolated from the gut microflora of abalone collected from the South Sea (Republic of Korea). Cells were Gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, catalase- and oxidase-positive. The major fatty acids were iso-C(15 : 0) (17.7 %), C(16 : 0) (13.4 %), iso-C(15 : 0) 2-OH and/or C(16 : 1)omega7c (12.5 %) and C(17 : 1)omega8c (10.7 %). The DNA G+C content was 53.7 mol%. A phylogenetic tree based on the 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain DW01(T) forms a lineage of the genus Shewanella and is closely related to Shewanella algae ATCC 51192(T) (98.3 % sequence similarity) and to other members of the genus Shewanella (91.0-94.9 %). The phenotypic characteristics and DNA-DNA hybridization relatedness data indicate that strain DW01(T) should be distinguished from S. algae ATCC 51192(T). On the basis of the data presented in this study, strain DW01(T) represents a novel species, for which the name Shewanella haliotis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is DW01(T) (=KCTC 12896(T)=JCM 14758(T)).