Aliidiomarina haloalkalitolerans sp. nov., a marine bacterium isolated from coastal surface seawater

A novel Gram-negative, rod shaped, motile, non-sporing strictly aerobic bacterium, designated strain AK5^T, was isolated from a sea water sample collected near Visakhapatnam coast, Bay of Bengal, India. Colonies on marine agar were circular, 3–4 mm in diameter, creamish and rose with entire margin. Growth occurred at 10–40°C, 0.5–12% (w/v) NaCl and pH of 7–11. Strain AK5^T was oxidase and catalase positive. The fatty acids were dominated by iso-branched saturated and unsaturated fatty acids with a high abundance of iso-C_15:0, iso-C_17:0 and summed feature 9 (as defined by MIDI). Q8 was found to be the major respiratory quinone and diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and four unidentified phospholipids as polar lipids. The DNA G+C content of strain AK5^T was 54.7 ± 0.2 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that strain AK5^T was a member of the genus Aliidiomarina and closely related to Aliidiomarina taiwanensis with a phylogenetic distance of 5.3% (94.7% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity) and clustered with the same species. Results from the polyphasic taxonomy study support the conclusion that strain AK5^T represents a novel Aliidiomarina species, for which the name Aliidiomarina haloalkalitolerans sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of A. haloalkalitolerans is AK5^T (= MTCC 11064^T = JCM 17359^T).