Halomonas xinjiangensis sp. nov., a halotolerant bacterium isolated from a salt lake

Abstract

A novel bacterium, TRM 0175T, belonging to the genus Halomonas, was isolated from a soil sample taken from a salt lake in Xinjiang Province, north-west China. The isolate was Gram-negative, aerobic, rod-shaped and motile by means of peritrichous flagella. It was catalase-positive and oxidase-negative. Growth occurred at NaCl concentrations of 0–20 % (optimum at 10–13 %), at 15–50 °C (optimum at 37 °C) and at pH 6.0–9.0 (optimum at pH 7.0). Metabolism was respiratory with oxygen as terminal electron acceptor. Acid was produced from d-ribose, d- and l-arabinose, d-xylose, d-galactose, d-mannose, l-rhamnose, cellobiose, maltose, trehalose and d- and l-fucose and was produced weakly from aesculin. The predominant ubiquinone was Q-9. The major fatty acids were C18 : 1 ω7c and C19 : 0 cyclo ω8c. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 60.0 mol%. The affiliation of strain TRM 0175T with the genus Halomonas was confirmed by 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons. The most closely related species was Halomonas anticariensis; 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity between H. anticariensis FP35T and strain TRM 0175T was 95.3 %. Phenotypically, some characteristics of TRM 0175T differed from those of H. anticariensis. On the basis of data from this polyphasic study, strain TRM 0175T represents a novel species of the genus Halomonas, for which the name Halomonas xinjiangensis sp. nov. is proposed; the type strain is TRM 0175T (=CCTCC AB 208329T =KCTC 22608T).