Thalassococcus halodurans gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel halotolerant member of the Roseobacter clade isolated from the marine sponge Halichondria panicea at Friday Harbor, USA

Abstract

A Gram-negative, non-pigmented, ovoid-shaped, strictly aerobic, catalase- and oxidase-positive and highly halotolerant bacterial strain that was devoid of swimming and gliding motility, designated UST050418-052T, was isolated from the surface of the marine sponge Halichondria panicea at Friday Harbor, WA, USA. Strain UST050418-052T required NaCl for growth and could tolerate salt concentrations of up to 18 %. The primary respiratory quinone was ubiquinone-10 and the DNA G+C content was 57.8 mol%. The predominant fatty acids were the saturated fatty acids 16 : 0 and 18 : 0 and the monounsaturated fatty acids 18 : 1ω7c and 18 : 1ω9c, altogether representing 82.9 % of the total. Phylogenetic analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence placed UST050418-052T in a distinct lineage within the Roseobacter clade in the family Rhodobacteraceae, with 95.0–95.8 % sequence similarity to members of the nearest genus Thalassobius. The DNA–DNA relatedness between UST050418-052T and Thalassobius gelatinovorus IAM 12617T was 9 %. Strain UST050418-052T could be differentiated from closely related members of the Roseobacter clade by a number of chemotaxonomic and phenotypic characteristics such as its distinct fatty acid profile, ability to reduce nitrate to nitrite and inability to utilize citrate, succinate, l-arginine and pyruvate. Based on the phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic and phenotypic evidence presented in this study, we suggest that strain UST050418-052T represents a novel genus in the family Rhodobacteraceae. The name Thalassococcus halodurans gen. nov., sp. nov., is thus proposed. The type strain of Thalassococcus halodurans is UST050418-052T (=JCM 13833T =NRRL B-41465T).

Inter- and Intraspecific Variations of Bacterial Communities Associated with Marine Sponges from San Juan Island, Washington

“…In addition, the low level of similarity of some of our sequences with sequences in the GenBank database indicated that there is an unexplored bacterial group in sponges and the potential of identifying novel bacteria. In fact, we have already identified two novel bacteria isolated from M. incrustans (23) and H. panicea (24).…”

Pyrosequencing Reveals Diverse and Distinct Sponge-Specific Microbial Communities in Sponges from a Single Geographical Location in Irish Waters

“…Subsequently, fluorescence in situ hybridisation studies have been used to identify numerous bacterial phyla closely associated with sponges [40]. Other culture-independent studies employed PCR amplification of bacterial 16S rRNA genes directly from sponge metagenomic DNA followed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis [22,48] or restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses [23,61]. Cloning and sequencing of 16S rRNA genes has also been used in many microbial diversity investigations from a wide range of sponge species [5,11,15,27,35,42,[51][52][53].…”

“…Similar studies have led to the isolation of novel bacterial genera and species from other phyla also. Novel α-Proteobacteria [22], γ-Proteobacteria [8,21,36,37], Bacteroidetes [17][18][19][20] and Verrucomicrobia [39,59] have all been cultured from sponge tissues. There is growing evidence that monophyletic bacterial lineages have co-evolved with their sponge hosts to form sponge-specific clades which are more similar to each other than to similar taxa from non-sponge sources [24,47,54].…”

Primorskyibacter insulae sp. nov., isolated from the junction between the ocean and a freshwater spring

“…The genus Primorskyibacter , which was proposed by Romanenko et al (2011), comprises a single recognized species, Primorskyibacter sedentarius . The genus Thalassococcus was proposed by Lee et al (2007) and comprises two species with validly published names, Thalassococcus halodurans (Lee et al , 2007) and Thalassococcus lentus (Park et al , 2013). The two genera have been isolated from marine environments (Lee et al , 2007; Romanenko et al , 2011; Park et al , 2013).…”