Halobacillus salsuginis sp. nov., a moderately halophilic bacterium from a subterranean brine.

A moderately halophilic, endospore-forming, Gram-positive, catalase- and oxidase-positive, motile, rod-shaped, aerobic bacterium, designated strain JSM 078133(T), was isolated from a subterranean brine sample collected from a salt mine in Hunan Province, China. Strain JSM 078133(T) was able to grow with 1-23 % (w/v) total salts (optimum, 5-10 %) and at pH 6.0-10.0 (optimum, pH 7.5) and 10-45 degrees C (optimum, 30 degrees C). meso-Diaminopimelic acid was present in the cell-wall peptidoglycan. The predominant respiratory quinone was menaquinone 7 (MK-7) and the major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C(15 : 0), anteiso-C(17 : 0) and iso-C(15 : 0). The genomic DNA G+C content of strain JSM 078133(T) was 42.2 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons revealed that strain JSM 078133(T) belongs to the genus Halobacillus, and was related most closely to the type strains of Halobacillus campisalis (97.1 % sequence similarity), Halobacillus alkaliphilus (97.0 %) and Halobacillus yeomjeoni (96.8 %). The combination of phylogenetic analysis, DNA-DNA relatedness data, phenotypic characteristics and chemotaxonomic data supported the view that strain JSM 078133(T) represents a novel species of the genus Halobacillus, for which the name Halobacillus salsuginis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is JSM 078133(T) (=DSM 21185(T)=KCTC 13236(T)).