A novel haloarchael lineage widely distributed in the hypersaline marshy environment of Little and Great Rann of Kutch in India

Archaea (Archaebacteria) are a phenotypically diverse group of microorganisms distributed mainly in extreme environments throughout the world. To study the community of archaea present in the extreme salty marshes of the Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India culture-dependent approach was employed for isolating archaea by mimicking extreme hypersaline environment and 25 extreme halophilic archaea were obtained. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the presence of a number of uncultivated and unidentified members of archaea among the isolates present. Phylogenetic analysis involving the sequence data of 16S rRNA of 25 haloarchael isolates, keeping Methanospirillium hungatei DSM864 (M60880) as the out-group, also identified a novel lineage of three isolates. The 16S rRNA sequences of the strains 3A1-DGR, H9-DGR and 2ANA-DGR showed less than 93% similarity with the available known type strains and these three strains belong to a distinct novel lineage within the family Halobacteriaceae, near an uncultivated environmental cluster.