Description of Alteribacillus alkaliphilus sp. nov., reassignment of Bacillus iranensis (Bagheri et al. 2012) as Alteribacillus iranensis comb. nov. and emended description of the genus Alteribacillus.

A novel Gram-stain-positive, aerobic, endospore-forming, non-motile, rod-shaped bacterium (strain JC229T) was isolated from a water sample collected from waterlogged alkaline soil. Strain JC229T was oxidase- and catalase-positive. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain JC229T was identified as belonging to the genus Alteribacillus of the phylum Firmicutes and was found to be most closely related to Alteribacillus bidgolensis P4BT (97.9 % similarity), Bacillus iranensis X5BT (97.2 %) and Alteribacillus persepolensis HS136T (96.6 %), and more distantly related to other members of the genus Bacillus (<95.2 %). Strain JC229T was further identified to be distinctly related to the type strains of A. bidgolensis and B. iranensis (<26 % based on DNA-DNA hybridization and ΔTm of >5 °C). Strain JC229T grew optimally at pH 8 (range 5-11), at 35-40 °C (range 20-50 °C) and at a salinity of 3-5 % (range 0.5-24 %). The DNA G+C content was 40.2 mol%. Major cellular fatty acids of strain JC229T were anteiso-C15 : 0, iso-C15 : 0, anteiso-C17 : 0 and iso-C16 : 0. The peptidoglycan contained meso-diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid. The predominant quinone system was menaquinone 7. Polar lipids of strain JC229T included diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol and two unidentified lipids. On the basis of morphological, physiological, genetic, phylogenetic and chemotaxonomic analyses, strain JC229T should be assigned to a novel species of the genus Alteribacillus, for which the name Alteribacillus alkaliphilus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is JC229T (=LMG 28999T=KCTC 33726T). It is also suggested to transfer B. iranensis to the genus Alteribacillus as Alteribacillus iranensis comb. nov.