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The nutrition and flavor of cheese are generated by the microbial community. Thus, horse milk cheese with unique nutrition and flavor, an increasingly popular local cheese of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, is considered to have diverse and specific bacterial community. To verify this hypothesis, horse, cow, and goat milk cheese samples produced under the same environmental conditions and manufacturing process were collected, and the 16S rRNA gene was targeted to determine the bacterial population size and community composition by real‐time quantitative PCR and high‐throughput sequencing. The bacterial community of horse milk cheese had a significantly larger bacterial population size, greater species richness, and a more diverse composition than those of cow and goat milk cheeses. Unlike the absolute dominance of Lactococcus and Streptococcus in cow and goat milk cheeses, Lactobacillus and Streptococcus dominated the bacterial community as the starter lactic acid bacteria in horse milk cheese. Additionally, horse milk cheese also contains a higher abundance of unclassified secondary bacteria and specific secondary bacteria (e.g., Psychrobacter , Sulfurisoma , Halomonas, and Brevibacterium ) than cow and goat milk cheeses. These abundant, diverse, and specific starter lactic acid bacteria and secondary bacteria may generate unique nutrition and flavor of horse milk cheese.

Three halophilic archaeal strains, YJ-53T, ZS-5 and DYF38, were isolated from marine solar salterns located in different provinces of China. The three strains formed a single cluster (99.7–99.8 and 97.9–99.2 % similarities, respectively) that was separate from the current two members of Salinigranum (96.7–98.0 and 89.8–92.9 % similarities, respectively) on the basis of 16S rRNA and rpoB′ gene sequence comparisons and phylogenetic analysis. Diverse phenotypic characteristics differentiated strains YJ-53T, ZS-5 and DYF38 from Salinigranum rubrum GX10T and Salinigranum salinum YJ-50-S2T. The major polar lipids of isolated strains were phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol phosphate methyl ester and two major glycolipids chromatographically identical to mannosyl glucosyl diether and sulfated mannosyl glucosyl diether, detected in the current members of Salinigranum . The OrthoANI and in silico DNA–DNA hybridization (DDH) values between the three strains were in the range of 97.7–98.4 % and 80.3–86.1 %, respectively, much higher than the threshold values proposed as species boundaries (average nucleotide identity 95–96 % and in silico DDH 70 %), revealing that the three strains represent one species. Results of comparative OrthoANI and in silico DDH analyses of the strains described in this study with validly described members of the genus Salinigranum supported that strains YJ-53T (=CGMCC 1.12860T=JCM 30238T), ZS-5 (=CGMCC 1.12867=JCM 30240) and DYF38 (=CGMCC 1.13779=JCM 33557) represent a novel species of the genus Salinigranum , for which the name Salinigranum halophilum sp. nov. is proposed.

A novel and efficient synthesis of betamethasone has been developed from the readily available 9α-hydroxyandrost-4-ene-3,17-dione (9αOH-AD). The 16α-methyl was introduced stereoselectively with CH3Br and converted to the 16β-methyl, the 17-side chain was installed with 2-chlorovinyl ethyl ether in the place of the toxic KCN/HOAc, and a mild fermentation was employed for the 1,2-dehydrogenation, replacing the DDQ oxidation. By adjustments and improvements of the steps, this route produced betamethasone in 11 steps with a 22.9% overall yield, showing its potential for industrial application with relatively low toxicity and cost.

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