A novel aerobic marine bacterium, strain AN44 T , was isolated from the coral Fungia echinata sampled from the Andaman Sea, India. Cells were Gram-negative, motile and rod-shaped. Oxidase and catalase tests were positive. Heterotrophic growth was observed at pH 5.5-10 and at 16-42 6C, with optimum growth at pH 7-8 and 28 6C. Strain AN44T grew in the presence of 0.5-11 % (w/v) NaCl; the optimal NaCl concentration for growth was 3-5 %. The DNA G+C content was 47.8 mol%. Predominant cellular fatty acids of strain AN44 T were C 18 : 1 v7c,

In this study, we characterize 18 cultivable bacteria associated within the mucus of the coral Fungia echinata from Andaman Sea, India. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that all the 18 strains isolated in this study from the coral mucus belong to the group Gammaproteobacteria and majority of them were identified as Vibrio core group. Our objective was to investigate the presence of the SXT/R391 integrating conjugative elements (ICEs) targeting integrase int(SXT) and SXT Hotspot IV genetic elements in these isolates. SXT/ICE initially reported in Vibrio cholerae contains many antibiotic and heavy metal resistance genes and acts as an effective tool for the horizontal transfer of resistance genes in other bacterial populations. Two of our strains, AN44 and AN60, were resistant to sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim, chloramphenicol, and streptomycin, in addition to other antibiotics such as neomycin, ampicillin, rifampicin, and tetracycline. Using PCR followed by sequencing, we detected the SXT/ICE in these strains. The SXT integrase genes of AN44 and AN60 had a 99% and 100% identity with V. cholerae serogroup O139 strain SG24. This study provides the first evidence of the presence of SXT/R391 ICEs in Marinomonas sp. strain AN44 (JCM 18476(T) ) and Vibrio fortis strain AN60 (DSM 26067(T) ) isolated from the mucus of the coral F. echinata.

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A novel aerobic soil actinobacterium (strain MB10 T ) belonging to the genus Microbacterium was isolated from rice field soil samples collected from Jagatpur, Orissa, India. Cells were Gram-stain positive, short rod-shaped and motile. The strain was oxidase-negative and catalase-positive. Heterotrophic growth was observed at pH 5.0-11.0 and at 16-37 6C; optimum growth was observed at 28 6C and pH 7.0-9.0. The DNA G+C content was 71.6 mol%. Predominant cellular fatty acids of strain MB10 T were iso-C 14 : 0 , anteiso-C 15 : 0 , C 16 : 0 , iso-C 16 : 0 and anteiso-C 17 : 0 . Cell wall sugars were galactose, glucose and rhamnose. The major isoprenoid quinones were MK-9 (10 %), MK-10 (43 %) and MK-11 (36 %). The peptidoglycan represents the peptidoglycan type B2b. The polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phospholipid and unknown glycolipids. 16S rRNA gene sequence identity revealed the strain MB10 T clustered within the radiation of the genus Microbacterium and showed 99.2 % similarity with Microbacterium barkeri DSM 20145 T . However, DNA-DNA similarity study was 37.0 % with Microbacterium barkeri DSM 20145 T , the nearest phylogenetic relative. On the basis of phenotypic and chemotaxonomic properties, 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis and DNA-DNA reassociation studies, it is proposed that strain MB10 T represents a novel species of the genus Microbacterium, for which the name Microbacterium oryzae sp. nov. is proposed; the type strain is MB10 T (5JCM 16837 T 5DSM 23396 T ).

Three closely related, non-sporulating, aerobic, Gram-stain-negative, motile, rod-shaped isolates (S5-53 T , S6-62 and S6-64) were obtained from mucus of corals Favia veroni from the Andaman Sea, India. Colonies grown on marine agar were small, circular and cream-coloured. Heterotrophic growth was observed at 10-40 C and pH 6-10; optimum growth occurred at The genus Sulfitobacter belongs to the family Rhodobacteraceae in the class Alphaproteobacteria. The genus was introduced by Sorokin (1995) to accommodate two strains of heterotrophic bacteria isolated from the Black Sea with Sulfitobacter pontiacus as the type species. At the time of writing, the genus Sulfitobacter contains 15 recognized species (Parte, 2014) that were isolated from marine environments either from seawater (Sorokin, 1995;Kwak et al., 2014) or associated with marine invertebrates (Fukui et al., 2014;Hong et al., 2015) from different geographical regions and thought to play an important role in organic sulfur cycling in the ocean environment (Ivanova et al., 2004). Phenotypically, strains are Gram-negative, aerobic and rod-shaped. All strains of the genus grow optimally at 25-30 C and pH 7.0-8.0 and require NaCl for growth. Q10 is the predominant quinone. All strains are catalase-and oxidase-positive. Phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine are the main polar lipids and C 18 : 1 !7c, C 16 : 0 and C 10 : 0 3-OH are the major fatty acids. The DNA G+C content varies between 55 and 63.7 mol%. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, members of this genus are closely related to the monotypic genus Oceanibulbus (Wagner-Döbler et al., 2004) T in the phylogenetic tree (Ivanova et al., 2004;Kwak et al., 2014;Fukui et al., 2014).In the present study, we describe the phenotypic, genotypic and chemotaxonomic characteristics of three strains, i.e. S5-53 T , S6-62 and S6-64, isolated from mucus of the coral Favia veroni from the Andaman Sea, India. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, strain S5-53 T is shown to have a close phylogenetic relationship with the members of the genera Sulfitobacter and Oceanibulbus. A detailed taxonomic study demonstrated that the strains constituted a novel species of the genus Sulfitobacter and strain S5-53 T has been proposed as the type strain.Multiple specimens of the coral Favia veroni were collected from sea near Henry Lawrence island, Andaman Sea (12