sp. nov., a moderately halophilic bacterium isolated from saltern soil.

A Gram-stain-positive, moderately halophilic bacterium, designated strain BH258, was isolated from solar saltern sediment sampled at Shinan in the Republic of Korea. Cells of strain BH258 were found to be strictly aerobic, motile, endospore-forming rods which could grow at 15-45 °C (optimum, 35 °C), at pH 5.5-9.0 (pH 7.0) and at salinities of 0.5-20 % (w/v) NaCl (7-10%). Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain BH258 belongs to the genus , showing highest sequence similarity to BH30097 (96.1 %), YIM 93624 (95.9 %), B6B (95.6 %) and WSY08-1 (95.1 %). The predominant isoprenoid quinone was identified as menaquinone-7, and the cell-wall peptidoglycan was found to contain -diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid. The major fatty acids were identified as anteiso-C, iso-C, anteiso-C and iso-C. The major polar lipids were identified as phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol and three unidentified phospholipids. The DNA G+C content of this novel isolate was determined to be 37.35 mol%. On the basis of the results of phylogenetic, phenotypic and chemotaxonomic analyses in this study, strain BH258 is considered to represent a novel species of the genus , for which the name sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is BH258 (=KACC 18680=NBRC 111875).