“…The main features of this genus are as follows: Gram-positive, non-motile, non-spore form ing cocci, a DNA G?C content of 46-51 mol%, MK-6 as the predominant respiratory quinone and L-LysGly 5 as the cell-wall peptidoglycan type (Aslam et al 2007;Chen et al 2009). At the time of writing, the genus comprised thirteen species with validly published names: Salinicoccus roseus (Ventosa et al 1990), Salinicoccus hispanicus (Ventosa et al 1992), Salinicoccus alkaliphilus (Zhang et al 2002), Salinicoccus salsiraiae (França et al 2006), Salinicoccus jeotgali (Aslam et al 2007), Salinicoccus luteus (Zhang et al 2007), Salinicoccus siamensis (Pakdeeto et al 2007), Salinicoccus kunmingernsis (Chen et al 2007), Salinicoccus iramensis (Amoozegar et al 2008), Salinicoccus salitudinis (Chen et al 2008), Salinicoccus halodurans (Wang et al 2008), Salinicoccus albus (Chen et al 2009) and Salinicoccus carnicancri (Jung et al 2009). In the recent study of the microbial diversity of the Keke Salt Lake (36°50 0 -37°06 0 N, 97°58 0 -98°30 0 E) in Qinghai, northwest China, we show that a strain, designated K164 T , represents a novel moderate halophilic species of the genus Salinicoccus on the basis of phenotypic, chemotaxonomic characterization and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis.…”