Bacillus aidingensis sp. nov., a moderately halophilic bacterium isolated from Ai-Ding salt lake in China

1 State Key Laboratory of Microbial Resources, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, PR China 2 Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sevilla, 41012 Sevilla, Spain Correspondence Yanhe Ma mayanhe{at}im.ac.cn A Gram-positive, halophilic bacterium was isolated from a sediment sample from Ai-Ding salt lake in China. The isolate, designated strain 17-5 T , grew at salinities of 8–33 % (w/v) NaCl (optimally at 12 %, w/v). The genomic DNA G+C content of strain 17-5 T was 48.1 mol%. The predominant isoprenoid quinone was MK-7(H 2 ) and the cell-wall peptidoglycan contained meso -diaminopimelic acid. The major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol and an unidentified glycolipid. The major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C 15 : 0 , anteiso-C 17 : 0 , iso-C 16 : 0 and C 16 : 0 . Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain 17-5 T was a member of the genus Bacillus , being most closely related to Bacillus qingdaonensis JCM 14087 T (96.0 % sequence similarity) and Bacillus salarius DSM 16461 T (95.6 %). The levels of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with respect to other Bacillus species were less than 91.7 %. Comparative analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence data, chemotaxonomy and phenotypic features of the novel isolate and related species of Bacillus indicated that strain 17-5 T represents a novel species within the genus Bacillus , for which the name Bacillus aidingensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is 17-5 T (=CGMCC 1.3227 T =DSM 18341 T ). The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain 17-5 T is DQ504377 . Photomicrographs of cells of strain 17-5 T are available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.