Halobacillus salicampi sp. nov., a moderately halophilic bacterium isolated from a solar saltern sediment

A Gram-positive, moderately halophilic bacterium, designated strain TGS-15T, was isolated from the sediment of a solar saltern pond located in Shinan, Korea. Strain TGS-15T was found to be a strictly aerobic, non-motile rod which can grow at pH 6.0–10.0 (optimum, pH 9.0), at 20–35 °C (optimum, 28 °C) and at salinities of 1–20 % (w/v) NaCl (optimum, 9 % NaCl). Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain TGS-15T belongs to the genus Halobacillus, with sequence similarity of 98.5–96.0 % to known type strains, showing high sequence similarity to Halobacillus locisalis MSS-155T (98.5 %), Halobacillus faecis IGA7-4T (98.2 %) and Halobacillus alkaliphilus FP5T (98.0 %), and less than 98.0 % sequence similarity to other currently recognised type strains of the genus. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, an unidentified glycolipid and an unidentified lipid. The cell wall peptidoglycan was found to be based on L-Orn-D-Asp, the predominant isoprenoid quinone was identified as menaquinone-7 (MK-7) and the major fatty acids were identified as anteiso-C15:0, iso-C15:0, anteiso-C17:0 and C16:1 ω7c alcohol. The DNA G+C content of this novel isolate was determined to be 45.3 mol %. Levels of DNA:DNA relatedness between strain TGS-15T and the type strains of 13 other species of the genus ranged from 52 to 9 %. On the basis of the polyphasic analysis conducted in this study, strain TGS-15T is concluded to represent a novel species of the genus Halobacillus, for which the name Halobacillus salicampi sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is TGS-15T (=KACC 18264T = NBRC 110640T).