Caenispirillum salinarum sp nov., a member of the family Rhodospirillaceae isolated from a solar saltern

A novel Gram-negative, vibrio-shaped, motile bacterium, designated strain AK4(T), was isolated from a sediment sample collected from a solar saltern at Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, India. Strain AK4T was positive for oxidase, urease and DNase activities but negative for gelatinase, catalase, ornithine decarboxylase, lysine decarboxylase, nitrate reduction, aesculin, indole and lipase activities. The fatty acids were dominated by unsaturated components, with a high abundance of summed feature 8 (C-18:1 omega 7c and/or C-18:1 omega 6c) and C-17:1 omega 6c. Strain AK4(T) contained Q-10 as the major respiratory quinone and phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylcholine as major polar lipids. The DNA G+C content of strain AK4(T) was 71.0 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain AK4(T) was most closely related to the type strain of Caenispirillum bisanense of the family Rhodospirillaceae (phylum 'Proteobacteria') (96.6 % sequence similarity). It shared <93.2 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with other members of the family. Based on phenotypic characteristics and phylogenetic inference, strain AK4(T) is considered to represent a novel species of the genus Caenispirillum, for which the name Caenispirillum salinarum sp. nov. is proposed; the type strain is AK4(T) (=MTCC 10963(T)=JCM 17360(T)).