Arenibacter aquaticus sp. nov., a marine bacterium isolated from surface sea water in the South China Sea

A Gram-stain-negative and facultatively anaerobic bacterial strain, designated GUO , was isolated from surface water collected from the South China Sea. Cells were non-flagellate, yellow, non-spore-forming and rod-shaped. The 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons with species in the genus showed that strain GUO shares the highest similarity of 97.5 % with and . Average nucleotide identity and digital DNA-DNA hybridization values between strain GUO and its related type strains were 77.1-78.4% and 20.8-26.2 % respectively. Growth of strain GUO occurred at 15-50°C (optimum, 20-25°C), pH 5-7.5 (pH 6) and in media containing 0-7 % NaCl (optimum, 0-1 %). Cells contained methanol-soluble yellow-coloured pigments but flexirubin-type pigments were absent. The major fatty acids (>5 %) were iso-C 3-OH, iso-C , anteiso-C , C , summed feature 3, iso-C G and iso-C 3-OH. The dominant polar lipids comprised phosphatidylethanolamine and some unidentified polar lipids. The main respiratory quinone was menaquinone-6. The DNA G+C content of strain GUO was 40.1 %. Based on the presented data, we consider strain GUO to represent a novel species of the genus , for which the name sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is GUO (=KCTC 62629 =MCCC 1K03559 ).