Salibacterium nitratireducens sp. nov., a haloalkalitolerant bacterium isolated from a water sample from Sambhar salt lake, India.

A strictly aerobic, haloalkali-tolerant, Gram-stain-positive, non-motile, rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain SMB4T, was isolated from a water sample collected from Sambhar salt lake, Rajasthan, India. Growth occurred at 25–50 °C, 4–12 % (w/v) NaCl and pH of 5–9. Strain SMB4T was positive for β-galactosidase, oxidase, catalase and urease activities. The fatty acids were dominated by branched forms of fatty acids with iso- and anteiso-saturated fatty acids, with a high abundance of anteiso-C15 : 0, anteiso-C17 : 0 and C18 : 0. The cell-wall peptidoglycan of strain SMB4T contained meso-diaminopimelic acid, while the polar lipids included diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, one unidentified phospholipid and three unidentified lipids. The DNA G+C content of strain SMB4T was 49.1 mol%. A blast sequence similarity search based on 16S rRNA gene sequence indicated that Salibacterium halochares , Salibacterium halotolerans and Salibacterium qingdaonense were the nearest phylogenetic neighbours, with a pair-wise sequence similarities of 98.4, 98.2 and 97.0 % respectively. Phylogenetic analysis showed that strain SMB4T was clustered with S. halochares and together clustered with S. halotolerans and S. qingdaonense. DNA–DNA hybridization of strain SMB4T with S. halochares DSM 21373T, S. halotolerans S7T and S. quigdaonense DSM 21621T showed a relatedness values of only 39.8, 26.3 and 42.8 %, respectively. Based on its phenotypic characteristics and on phylogenetic inference, strain SMB4T represents a novel species of the genus Salibacterium , for which the name Salibacterium nitratireducens sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is SMB4T (=MTCC 12633T=KCTC 33876T=JCM 32187T).