Halomonas populi sp. nov. isolated from Populus euphratica.

Three yellow-pigmented, Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, motile by flagella and rod-shaped strains, designated as MCT, PC and RC, were isolated from stems of Populus euphratica. Growth of those three strains occurs at 4-40 °C, pH 6.0-10.0 and with 0.5-18.0% (w/v) NaCl. Respiratory quinones contained ubiquinone-9 and ubiquione-8 as major and minor components, respectively. Major fatty acids (> 10%) were summed feature 8 (C18:1ω6c and/or C18:1ω7c), summed feature 3 (C16:1ω6c and/or C16:1ω7c) and C16:0. Polar lipids included diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol, two unidentified phospholipids, one unidentified aminolipid, one unidentified glycolipid and four unidentified lipids. Strains MCT, PC and RC shared pairwise 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of 99.9-100.0%, and showed higher similarities of 98.4-98.5% with Halomonas songnenensis NEAU-ST10-39T and 98.3-98.4% with Halomonas nanhaiensis YIM M 13059T than to other Halomonas type strains. Genomic comparisons revealed that those three strains had the pan-genome consisting of 4446 orthologous clusters, among which 676 orthologous clusters were absent in other Halomonas type strains. Phylogenomic tree indicated that strains MCT, PC and RC formed an independently stable clade with Halomonas nanhaiensis YIM M 13059T and Halomonas songnenensis NEAU-ST10-39T. The average nucleotide identity and digital DNA-DNA hybridization values between those three strains and other Halomonas type strains were < 89.9% and < 39.3%, respectively. Based upon phenotypic, chemotaxonomic, phylogenetic and genomic results, strains MCT, PC and RC represent a novel species in the genus Halomonas, for which the name Halomonas populi sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is MCT (= JCM 33545T = MCCC 1K03942T).