Piscibacillus halophilus sp. nov., a moderately halophilic bacterium from a hypersaline Iranian lake

1 Extremophiles Lab., Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Biology, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sevilla, 41012 Sevilla, Spain 3 Department of Biology, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Campus, Tehran, Iran Correspondence A. Ventosa ventosa{at}us.es A Gram-positive, moderately halophilic bacterium, designated strain HS224 T , was isolated from the hypersaline lake Howz-Soltan in Iran. Cells of strain HS224 T were rod-shaped, motile and produced oval endospores. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain HS224 T was affiliated to the genus Piscibacillus , exhibiting 98.5 % sequence similarity to the type strain of Piscibacillus salipiscarius . Strain HS224 T was also related closely to the type strains of Aquisalibacillus elongatus (98.0 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity), Filobacillus milosensis (97.9 %) and Tenuibacillus multivorans (97.0 %). Strain HS224 T was able to grow at NaCl concentrations of 1–20 % (w/v), with optimum growth occurring at 10 % (w/v) NaCl. The optimum temperature and pH for growth were 35 °C and pH 7.5. Major polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol, the isoprenoid quinone was MK-7 and the peptidoglycan type was A1 , with meso -diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid; these characteristics were shared with P. salipiscarius . The major cellular fatty acids of strain HS224 T were anteiso-C 15 : 0 , iso-C 15 : 0 , anteiso-C 17 : 0 and iso-C 16 : 0 . The G+C content of the DNA was 37.5 mol%. The level of DNA–DNA relatedness between strain HS224 T and P. salipiscarius JCM 13188 T was 30.8 %. It is evident from the genotypic, chemotaxonomic and phenotypic data presented that strain HS224 T represents a novel species of the genus Piscibacillus , for which the name Piscibacillus halophilus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is HS224 T (=CCM 7596 T =DSM 21633 T =JCM 15721 T =LMG 24786 T ). The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain HS224 T is FM864227 . Neighbour-joining and maximum-likelihood phylogenetic trees, based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, showing the position of strain HS224 T among related species, and a table giving the cellular fatty acid profiles of strain HS224 T and Piscibacillus salipiscarius RBU1-1 T are available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.