Salinispora arenicola gen. nov., sp. nov. and Salinispora tropica sp. nov., obligate marine actinomycetes belonging to the family Micromonosporaceae

1 School of Biology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK 2 Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0204, USA Correspondence Michael Goodfellow m.goodfellow{at}ncl.ac.uk A taxonomic study was carried out to clarify the taxonomy of representatives of a group of marine actinomycetes previously designated MAR 1 and considered to belong to the family Micromonosporaceae . The organisms had phenotypic properties consistent with their assignment to this taxon. The strains formed a distinct taxon in the 16S rRNA Micromonosporaceae gene tree and shared a range of phenotypic properties that distinguished them from members of all of the genera with validly published names classified in this family. The name proposed for this novel taxon is Salinispora gen. nov. The genus contains two species recognized using a range of genotypic and phenotypic criteria, including comparative 16S–23S rRNA gene spacer region and DNA–DNA relatedness data. The names proposed for these taxa are Salinispora arenicola sp. nov., the type species, and Salinispora tropica sp. nov.; the type strains of these novel species have been deposited in service culture collections as strain CNH-643 T (=ATCC BAA-917 T =DSM 44819 T ) and strain CNB-440 T (=ATCC BAA-916 T =DSM 44818 T ), respectively. Published online ahead of print on 15 April 2005 as DOI 10.1099/ijs.0.63625-0. The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the 16S–23S interspacer region sequences of Salinispora arenicola strains CNH-643 T , CNH-646 and CNH-964 and Salinispora tropica strains CNB-440 T , CNB-536 and CNH-898 are AY371897 , AY371898 , AY371900 , AY371895 , AY371896 and AY371899 , respectively. Present address: Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnologia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), CP 04510, México D.F., Mexico. Present address: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.