Rhodovulum bhavnagarense sp. nov., a phototrophic alphaproteobacterium isolated from a pink pond.

An oval to rod-shaped, Gram-stain-negative, phototrophic bacterium, strain JA738(T), was isolated from a sediment sample collected from a pink pond. Strain JA738(T) was non-motile and had vesicular-type intracellular photosynthetic membranes. Bacteriochlorophyll a and carotenoids of the spheroidene series were present as the major photosynthetic pigments. Strain JA738(T) required thiamine and pantothenate for growth. The major cellular fatty acids were C(18 : 1)ω7c, C(18 : 1)ω5c, C(18 : 0) and C(18 : 1)ω7c11-methyl; minor amounts of C(10 : 0) 3-OH and C(16 : 0) were also present. The major quinone was Q-10 and major polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and two unidentified sulfolipids (SL1-2). Phylogenetic analysis on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain JA738(T) clustered with species of the genus Rhodovulum in the class Alphaproteobacteria. Strain JA738(T) was most closely related to Rhodovulum adriaticum DSM 2781(T) (96.4 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity) and other members of the genus Rhodovulum (<96.1 %). On the basis of phenotypic and molecular genetic evidence, it is proposed that strain JA738(T) should be classified as a novel species of the genus Rhodovulum for which the name Rhodovulum bhavnagarense sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is JA738(T) ( = DSM 24766(T) = KCTC 15110(T)).