Halobacterium hubeiense sp. nov., a haloarchaeal species isolated from a bore core drilled in Hubei Province, PR China

Eight colonies of live microbes were isolated from an extensively surface-sterilized halite sample which had been retrieved from a depth of 2000 m from a salt mine in the Qianjiang Depression, Hubei Province, PR China. The eight colonies, obtained after 4 weeks of incubation, were named JI20-1 -JI20-8 and JI20-1 was selected as the type strain. The strains have been previously described, including a genomic analysis based on the complete genome for strain JI20-1 and draft genomes for the other strains. In that study, the name was suggested, based on the location of the drilling site. Previous phylogenomic analysis showed that strain JI20-1 is most closely related to the Permian isolate from Alpine rock salt. The orthologous average nucleotide identity (orthoANI) and digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH) percentages between the eight strains are 100-99.6 % and 99.8-96.4 %, respectively. The orthoANI and dDDH values of these strains with respect to the type strains of species of the genus are 89.9-78.2 % and 37.3-21.6 %, respectively, supporting their placement in a novel extremely halophilic archaeal species. The phylogenomic tree based on the comparison of sequences of 632 core-orthologous proteins confirmed the novel species status for these haloarchaea. The polar lipid profile includes phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol phosphate methyl ester, phosphatidylglycerol sulfate, and sulfated galactosyl mannosyl galactosyl glucosyl diether, a profile compatible with that of . Based on genomic, phenotypic, and chemotaxonomic characterization, we propose strain JI20-1 (=DSM 114402 = HAMBI 3616 ) as the type strain of a novel species in the genus , with the name sp. nov.