Lunatimonas lonarensis gen. nov., sp. nov., a haloalkaline bacterium of the family Cyclobacteriaceae with nitrate reducing activity.

Novel pinkish-orange pigmented, Gram-negative staining, half-moon shaped, non-motile, strictly aerobic strains designated AK24(T) and AK26 were isolated from water and sediment samples of Lonar Lake, Buldhana district, Maharahstra, India. Both strains were positive for oxidase, catalase and β-galactosidase activities. The predominant fatty acids were iso-C15:0 (41.5%), anteiso-C15:0 (9.7%), iso-C17:0 3OH (9.6%), iso-C17:1 ω9c (10.2%) and C16:1 ω7c/C16:1 ω6c/iso-C15:0 2OH (summed feature 3) (14.4%). The strains contained MK-7 as the major respiratory quinone, and phosphatidylethanolamine and five unidentified lipids as the polar lipids. Blast analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain AK24(T) showed that it was closely related to Aquiflexum balticum, with a pair-wise sequence similarity of 91.6%, as well as to Fontibacter ferrireducens, Belliella baltica and Indibacter alkaliphilus (91.3, 91.2 and 91.2% pair-wise sequence similarity, respectively), but it only had between 88.6 and 91.0% pair-wise sequence similarity to the rest of the family members. The MALDI-TOF assay reported no significant similarities for AK24(T) and AK26, since they potentially represented a new species. A MALDI MSP dendrogram showed close similarity between the two strains, but they maintained a distance from their phylogenetic neighbors. The genome of AK24(T) showed the presence of heavy metal tolerance genes, including the genes providing resistance to arsenic, cadmium, cobalt and zinc. A cluster of heat shock resistance genes was also found in the genome. Two lantibiotic producing genes, LanR and LasB, were also found in the genome of AK24(T). Strains AK24(T) and AK26 were very closely related to each other with 99.5% pair-wise sequence similarity. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the strains were members of the family Cyclobacteriaceae and they clustered with the genus Mariniradius, as well as with the genera Aquiflexum, Cecembia, Fontibacter, Indibacter, and Shivajiella. DNA-DNA hybridization between strains AK24(T) and AK26 showed a relatedness of 82% and their rep-PCR banding patterns were very similar. Based on data from the current polyphasic study, it is proposed that the isolates be placed in a new genus and species with the name Lunatimonas lonarensis gen. nov., sp. nov. The type strain of Lunatimonas lonarensis is AK24(T) (=JCM 18822(T)=MTCC 11627(T)).