Thermovirga lienii gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel moderately thermophilic, anaerobic, amino-acid-degrading bacterium isolated from a North Sea oil well

Department of Biology, University of Bergen, PO Box 7800, N-5020 Bergen, Norway Correspondence Nils-Kåre Birkeland nils.birkeland{at}bio.uib.no A novel anaerobic, moderately thermophilic bacterium, strain Cas60314 T , was isolated from hot oil-well production water obtained from an oil reservoir in the North Sea. The cells were Gram-negative, motile, straight rods. The salinity and pH growth optima were 2.0–3.0 % NaCl and 6.5–7.0, respectively. The optimum temperature was 58 °C. Strain Cas60314 T had a fermentative type of metabolism and utilized proteinous substrates, some single amino acids and a limited number of organic acids, but not sugars, fatty acids or alcohols. Cystine and elemental sulfur were reduced to sulfide. The G+C content of the DNA was 46.6 mol%. On the basis of phenotypic and phylogenetic features, it is proposed that this isolate represents a novel genus and species with the name Thermovirga lienii gen. nov., sp. nov. within the family Syntrophomonadaceae . The proposed type strain is strain Cas60314 T (=DSM 17291 T =ATTC BAA-1197 T ). The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain DSM 17291 T is DQ071273 . The morphology and growth temperature profile of Thermovirga lienii gen. nov., sp. nov. are shown in supplementary figures available in IJSEM Online.