Downloaded from www.microbiologyresearch.org by IP: 54.159.222.200 On: Wed, 11 May 2016 19:26:27 Salinispora arenicola gen. nov., sp. nov. and Salinispora tropica sp. nov., obligate marine actinomycetes belonging to the family Micromonosporaceae Luis A. Maldonado, 1 3 William Fenical, 2 Paul R. Jensen, 2 Christopher A. Kauffman, 2 Tracy J. Mincer, 2 4 Alan C. Ward, 1 Alan T. Bull 1 and Michael Goodfellow 1 Correspondence Michael Goodfellow m.goodfellow@ncl.ac.uk 1 School of Biology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK 2 Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0204, USA A taxonomic study was carried out to clarify the taxonomy of representatives of a group of marine actinomycetes previously designated MAR 1 and considered to belong to the family Micromonosporaceae. The organisms had phenotypic properties consistent with their assignment to this taxon. The strains formed a distinct taxon in the 16S rRNA Micromonosporaceae gene tree and shared a range of phenotypic properties that distinguished them from members of all of the genera with validly published names classified in this family. The name proposed for this novel taxon is Salinispora gen. nov. The genus contains two species recognized using a range of genotypic and phenotypic criteria, including comparative 16S–23S rRNA gene spacer region and DNA–DNA relatedness data. The names proposed for these taxa are Salinispora arenicola sp. nov., the type species, and Salinispora tropica sp. nov.; the type strains of these novel species have been deposited in service culture collections as strain CNH-643 T (=ATCC BAA-917 T = DSM 44819 T ) and strain CNB-440 T (=ATCC BAA-916 T =DSM 44818 T ), respectively. INTRODUCTION The family Micromonosporaceae Krasil’nikov 1938 emend. Stackebrandt et al. 1997 is a member of the suborder Micro- monosporineae, one of the taxa which make up the order Actinomycetales Buchanan 1917 emend. Stackebrandt et al. 1997. The emended family is phylogenetically distinct but encompasses a chemotaxonomically and morphologically diverse group of filamentous organisms belonging to the genera Actinoplanes, Catellatospora, Catenuloplanes, Couchioplanes, Dactylosporangium, Micromonospora and Pilimelia (Koch et al., 1996). The genera Asanoa Lee and Hah 2002, Longispora Matsumoto et al. 2003, Spirilliplanes Tamura et al. 1997, Verrucosispora Rheims et al. 1998 and Virgisporangium Tamura et al. 2001 were subsequently added to the family. Members of all of the genera classified in the family Micromonosporaceae can be distinguished from one another using a combination of chemical and morpho- logical properties (Lee & Hah, 2002; Matsumoto et al., 2003). Actinomycetes are generally considered to be indigenous to terrestrial habitats, although it is becoming increasingly apparent that they are common in marine ecosystems (Bull et al., 2000; Maldonado et al., 2005), as exemplified by the isolation of corynebacteria, dietziae, gordoniae, mycobac- teria and rhodococci from deep-sea sediments (Colquhoun et al., 1998; Takami et al., 1999), and micromonosporae and streptomycetes from bathyal and coastal sediments (Goodfellow & Haynes, 1984; Jensen et al., 1991; Takizawa et al., 1993). There is convincing evidence that actinomy- cetes are adapted to marine habitats (Moran et al., 1995; Mincer et al., 2002), though to date only one marine genus, Salinibacterium Han et al. 2003, and three marine species, Dietzia maris (Nesterenko et al. 1982) Rainey et al. 1995, Rhodococcus marinonascens Helmke and Weyland 1984 and Williamsia maris Stach et al. 2004, have been described. 3Present address: Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnologia, Universidad Nacional Auto ´ noma de Me ´ xico (UNAM), CP 04510, Me ´ xico D.F., Mexico. 4Present address: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Published online ahead of print on 15 April 2005 as DOI 10.1099/ ijs.0.63625-0. The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the 16S–23S interspacer region sequences of Salinispora arenicola strains CNH- 643 T , CNH-646 and CNH-964 and Salinispora tropica strains CNB- 440 T , CNB-536 and CNH-898 are AY371897, AY371898, AY371900, AY371895, AY371896 and AY371899, respectively. 63625 G 2005 IUMS Printed in Great Britain 1759 International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (2005), 55, 1759–1766 DOI 10.1099/ijs.0.63625-0