A taxonomic study was carried out on two isolates, strains BL1T and BL11, from marine sediment collected from the East Sea, Korea. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence studies showed that these isolates clearly affiliated with the Gammaproteobacteria. The genus Oceanisphaera was created by Romanenko et al. (2003) to accommodate Gram-negative, aerobic, moderately halophilic, and oxidase-and catalase-positive species. At present, Oceanisphaera litoralis is the only species in this genus. During screening of manganese-oxidizing strains, two novel manganese-oxidizing bacterial strains, BL1T and BL11, were isolated from marine sediment of the East Sea, Korea, and selected for further characterization by a polyphasic approach. BL1T and BL11 were isolated using an artificial marine agar medium (Stein et al., 2001) containing 1 mM MnCl 2 . A sediment sample was placed in a sterile conical tube and diluted serially with filtered sea water. An aliquot of each dilution was spread on the solid medium and incubated at 17 u C for 2 weeks. Colonies showing a brown colour on the medium were selected as manganese oxidizers (Stein et al., 2001). Single colonies were purified by transferring them onto new plates and subjecting them to an additional incubation for 3 days at 30 u C. Cultured strains were stocked as a glycerol suspension (20 %, w/v) at 270 uC.

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