Thalassobius litorarius sp. nov., isolated from a tidal flat

A Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, non-motile and rod-shaped bacterium, belonging to the family Rhodobacteraceae, designated strain MME-075T, was isolated from a tidal flat. Strain MME-075T grew with 1-5% (w/v) NaCl at 20-35 °C and at pH 7-9. Optimal growth occurred with 2% (w/v) NaCl at 25-30 °C and at pH 7. The dominant respiratory quinone was ubiquinone-10, whereas summed feature 8 (C18:1ω7c and/or C18:1ω6c), 11-methyl C18:1ω7c, and C16:0 were the major fatty acids. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and an unidentified lipid. The genomic DNA G+C content was 62.1 mol%. The highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity values were between strain MME-075T and Thalassobius aestuarii, Thalassococcus lentus, Thalassobius maritimus and Shimia marina and were 97.6, 97.5, 97.2 and 96.2%, respectively. Neighbour-joining, maximum-likelihood and maximum-parsimony phylogenetic trees, based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, revealed that strain MME-075T clustered with species of the genus Thalassobius. Based on phenotypic and phylogenetic taxonomic properties, this strain is proposed as a representative of a novel species of the genus Thalassobius, for which the name Thalassobius litorarius sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is MME-075T (=KCCM 43143T=JCM 30758T).