Myroides phaeus sp. nov., isolated from human saliva, and emended descriptions of the genus Myroides and the species Myroides profundi Zhang et al. 2009 and Myroides marinus Cho et al. 2011.

A novel bacterial strain, designated MY15T, was isolated from a saliva sample taken from a student during a teaching experiment in China. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that the novel strain was most closely related to Myroides marinus JS-08T, Myroides odoratimimus LMG 4029T and Myroides profundi D25T with 96.5 %, 96.3 % and 96.1 % gene sequence similarities, respectively, demonstrating that the novel strain belonged to the genus Myroides. Strain MY15T formed pale yellow colonies that turned to brown on Luria-Bertani (LB) agar and that gave off a characteristic fruity odour. Cells were Gram-staining-negative, rod-shaped and non-motile. The new isolate contained menaquinone 6 (MK-6) as the major respiratory quinone and C15:0 iso (51.2 %), C17:0 iso 3-OH (12.9 %) and C13:0 iso (10.5 %) as the dominant fatty acids. The G+C content of the DNA was 34.3 mol%. On the basis of this study, based on a polyphasic taxonomic approach, strain MY15T (=DSM 23313T=LMG 25566T) represents a novel species of the genus Myroides, for which the name Myroides phaeus sp. nov. is proposed. Emended descriptions of the genus Myroides and of the species M. profundi and M. marinus are also given.