Erythrobacter marinus sp. nov., isolated from seawater.

A Gram-negative, non-motile, ovoid to rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain HWDM-33(T), was isolated from seawater of the Yellow Sea, Korea, and was subjected to a polyphasic taxonomic study. Strain HWDM-33(T) grew optimally at pH 7-8, at 25 °C and in the presence of 2-3 % (w/v) NaCl. Neighbour-joining, maximum-likelihood and maximum-parsimony phylogenetic trees based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain HWDM-33(T) clustered with Erythrobacter gangjinensis K7-2(T), with which it shared 96.9 % sequence similarity. Strain HWDM-33(T) exhibited 94.2-95.8 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to the type strains of other recognized species of the genus Erythrobacter. Strain HWDM-33(T) contained Q-10 as the predominant ubiquinone and C(18 : 1)ω7c, C(17:1)ω6c, and C(16:1)ω7c and/or iso-C(15 : 0) 2-OH as the major fatty acids. The major polar lipids were sphingoglycolipid, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine and an unidentified lipid. The DNA G+C content of strain HWDM-33(T) was 66.1 mol%. Differential phenotypic properties and phylogenetic distinctiveness demonstrated that strain HWDM-33(T) was separate from E. gangjinensis and other recognized species of the genus Erythrobacter. On the basis of the data presented here, strain HWDM-33(T) represents a novel species of the genus Erythrobacter, for which the name Erythrobacter marinus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is HWDM-33(T) (= KCTC 23554(T) = CCUG 60528(T)).