Colwellia beringensis sp. nov., a psychrophilic bacterium isolated from the Bering Sea.

A Gram stain-negative, motile and rod-shaped bacterial strain, designated NB097-1T, was isolated from a marine sediment sample collected from the Bering Sea, and subjected to a polyphasic taxonomic study. Strain NB097-1T grew at 0-25 °C, with an optimum growth temperature of 10-13 °C. Phylogenetic trees reconstructed based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain NB097-1T belonged to the genus Colwellia. Strain NB097-1T exhibited 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of 98.6, 98.5, 98.0, 97.2 and 96.8 % with the type strains of Colwellia mytili, C. sediminilitoris, C. aestuarii, C. polaris and C. chukchiensis, respectively. Strain NB097-1T had Q-8 as the major respiratory quinone and contained summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c) and C16 : 0 as the major fatty acids. The major polar lipids detected in strain NB097-1T were phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylethanolamine. The genomic DNA G+C content of strain NB097-1T was 38.5 mol%, and its average nucleotide identity values with the type strains of C. mytili, C. sediminilitoris, C. aestuarii, C. polaris and C. chukchiensis were 77.30, 78.99, 78.82, 80.66 and 75.77 %, respectively. On the basis of phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic properties, together with average nucleotide identity value data, strain NB097-1T represents a novel species of the genus Colwellia, for which the name Colwellia beringensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is NB097-1T (=MCCC 1A11668T=KCTC 52554T).