Vibrio azureus sp. nov., a luminous marine bacterium isolated from seawater

1 Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, 1-15-1, Minamidai, Nakano-Ku, Tokyo 164-8639, Japan 2 Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo 113-0032, Japan Correspondence Susumu Yoshizawa y_susumu{at}nenv.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp Two luminous marine bacterial strains, LC2-005 T and LC2-102, were isolated from seawater at Kuroshio Region and Sagami Bay in Japan, respectively. These bacteria were Gram-negative, oxidase-positive, catalase-positive, motile and rod-shaped. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strains LC2-005 T and LC2-102 formed a cluster within the Vibrio harveyi species group. However, multilocus sequence analysis using five loci ( pyrH , ftsZ , mreB , gyrB and gapA ) and DNA–DNA hybridization experiments indicated that these strains were distinct from the currently known Vibrio species. Additionally, these strains differ from related Vibrio species in utilization of glucose, mannitol, inositol, sorbitol, rhamnose, sucrose, melibiose and arabinose, production of lysine decarboxylase, ornithine decarboxylase, tryptophan deaminase, esterase (C4), lipase (C4), chymotrypsin, acid phosphatase, -glucosidase, β -glucosidase and N -acetyl- β -glucosaminidase and the ability to reduce nitrate to nitrite. The major fatty acids were C 15 : 0 iso 2-OH and/or C 16 : 1 7 c , C 16 : 0 , C 18 : 1 7 c and C 14 : 0 . The DNA G+C contents of strains LC2-005 T and LC2-102 were 45.2 and 45.5 mol%, respectively. On the basis of the polyphasic taxonomic evidence presented in this study, it can be concluded that strains LC2-005 T and LC2-102 belong to the same genospecies and represent a novel species of the genus Vibrio , for which the name Vibrio azureus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is LC2-005 T (=NBRC 104587 T =KCTC 22352 T ). Abbreviations: MLSA, multilocus sequence analysis The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the 16S rRNA, gyrB , pyrH , ftsZ , mreB and gapA gene sequences of strains NBRC 104587 T and NBRC 104588 determined in this study are AB428897 –AB428908 (see Supplementary Table S1, available with the online version of this paper). Two supplementary tables and eight supplementary figures are available with the online version of this paper.