Exiguobacterium aquaticum sp nov., a member of the genus Exiguobacterium

A Gram-positive, motile, short rod-shaped, orange pigmented bacterium, designated strain IMTB-3094(T), was isolated from a water sample collected from Tikkar Tal Lake, Haryana, and subjected to detailed polyphasic taxonomic analysis. Strain IMTB-3094(T) possessed most of the phenotypic and chemotaxonomic properties of the genus Exiguobacterium and, based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, was assigned to this genus. Strain IMTB-3094(T) exhibited the highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to Exiguobacterium mexicanum MTCC 7759(T) (99.5%) followed by Exiguobacterium aurantiacum MTCC 6414(T) (99.1 %), Exiguobacterium aestuarii MTCC 7750(T) (98.0%), Exiguobacterium profundum MTCC 10851(T) (98.0 %) and Exiguobacterium marinum MTCC 7751(T) (98.0 %). The G+C content of the genomic DNA of strain IMTB-3094(T) was 53.2 mol% and a DNA-DNA relatedness study confirmed that it represents a novel species. The major fatty acids of strain IMTB-3094(T) were iso-C-17:0 (16.1%), anteiso-C-13:0 (19.0%), iso-C-13:0 (11.90/0), iso-C-15:0 (9.8%) and iso-C-17:1 (12.7%). The predominant quinones were MK-7 (55.0%) and MK-6 (26.0%) with minor amounts of MK-8 (12.0%). Based on phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic analyses, strain IMTB-3094(T) represents a novel species of the genus Exiguobacterium, for which the name Exiguobacterium aquaticum sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is IMTB-3094(T) (=MTCC 10958(T) =JCM 17977(T)).