Bacillus maritimus sp. nov., a novel member of the genus Bacillus isolated from marine sediment

The taxonomic position of a Gram-stain-positive, endospore-forming bacterium, strain KS16-9T, isolated from a marine sediment sample collected from Kovalam, Kanyakumari coastal region of the Indian Ocean, India, was analysed by a polyphasic approach. Strain KS16-9T had typical phenotypic characteristics and chemotaxonomic features (menaquinones, fatty acids and lipids) that were consistent with the genus Bacillus. omparative analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence of the strain with previously published Bacillus type strains confirmed that it belongs to the genus Bacillus and is moderately related to Bacillus persicus B48T (98.42 % similarity), followed by Bacillus foraminis CV53T (97.67 %) and Bacillus rigiliprofundi (97.61 %). Other species in the genus Bacillusshared <97.6 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. Strain KS16-9T contained MK-7 as the predominant menaquinone, meso-diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic cell-wall diamino acid, iso-C15 : 0 and anteiso-C15 : 0 as major fatty acids, and diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylethanolamine as the major phospholipids. The DNA G+C content of strain KS16-9T was 45.4 mol%. Based on data from this polyphasic taxonomic study, strain KS16-9T represents a novel species of the genus Bacillus, for which the name Bacillus maritimus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is KS16-9T (=MTCC 12305T=DSM 100413T=KCTC 33834T).