Abstract

A moderately halophilic spore forming, motile, Gram-positive, rod-shaped bacterial strain designated as KGW1T was isolated from water sample of Chilika Lake and characterized taxonomically using polyphasic approach. The strain grew in the presence of 0–25% (w/v) NaCl in marine salt agar media, hydrolyzes casein, and gelatin and shows presence of alkaline proteases. The major cell wall menaquinone was MK7 and major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C15:0 (44.89%), anteiso-C17:0 (6.18%), isoC15:0 (19.38%), and iso-C16:0 (7.39%). Several chemotaxonomic features conform the isolate be a member of genus Halobacillus. The isolate KGW1T contained A1γ meso-Dpm-direct type of peptidoglycan which is different from its phylogenetically closest neighbours. The 16S rRNA gene sequence based phylogenetic analysis also revealed the strain KGW1T was affiliated to the genus Halobacillus and sequence similarity between the isolated strain and the type strains of Halobacillus species were found closest to, H. dabanensis D-8 DSM 18199T (99.08%) and H. faecis IGA7-4 DSM 21559T (99.01%), H. trueperi SL-5 DSM 10404T (98.94%). The in silico DDH showed that the values in a range of 14.2–17.5% with the most closest strain H. dabanensis D-8 DSM 18199T and other type strains of the genus Halobacillus for which whole genome sequence is reported. DNA-DNA relatedness between strain KGW1T and the closest type strain Halobacillus trueperi DSM 10404T was 11.75% (± 1.15). The draft genome sequence includes 3,683,819 bases and comprises of 3898 predicted coding sequences with a G + C content of 46.98%. Thus, the significant distinctiveness supported by phenotypic and genotypic data with its closest neighbors and other closely related species confirm the strain KGW1T to be classified as a novel species within the genus Halobacillus, for which the name Halobacillus marinus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is KGW1T (= DSM 29522 = JCM 30443).

• Keywords: Halobacillus; proteases