Halorubrum alkaliphilum sp. nov., a novel haloalkaliphile isolated from a soda lake in Xinjiang, China

1 State Key Laboratory for Microbial Resources, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, ZhongGuanCun, Haidian, Beijing 100080, PR China 2 Ecosystem Sciences Division, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California at Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Correspondence Shuang-Jiang Liu shuangjiang{at}hotmail.com A novel haloalkaliphilic archaeon, strain DZ-1 T , was isolated from a soda lake in Xinjiang, China. The taxonomy of strain DZ-1 T was studied by polyphasic methods. According to 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain DZ-1 T was phylogenetically related to Halorubrum tibetense (97·5 %), Halorubrum vacuolatum (95·7 %) and Halorubrum saccharovorum (95·9 %). Strain DZ-1 T was able to grow at 20–44 °C and was also physiologically different from the above-mentioned species with respect to assimilation of sugars and utilization of organic acids. The DNA G+C content of strain DZ-1 T was 62·1 mol% ( T m ). The DNA–DNA relatedness of strain DZ-1 T to H. tibetense and H. vacuolatum was 22 and 13 %, respectively. It was concluded that strain DZ-1 T represents a novel species of the genus Halorubrum , for which the name Halorubrum alkaliphilum (type strain, DZ-1 T =AS 1.3528 T =JCM 12358 T ) is proposed. Published online ahead of print on 30 July 2004 as DOI 10.1099/ijs.0.63320-0. The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain DZ-1 T is AY510708 .