Correspondence

A novel aerobic, Gram-staining-negative bacterium, designated strain LAM-WHM-ZCT, was isolated from coastal sediment samples from the Bohai Sea, near Yantai, China. Cells of LAM-WHM-ZCT were non-motile, short-rod- or coccoid-shaped. The temperature and pH ranges for growth were 4–40 8C (optimum: 20–33 8C) and pH 5–9 (optimum: pH 7.5). The strain did not require NaCl for growth but tolerated up to 10 % NaCl (w/v). The major fatty acids of strain LAM-WHM-ZCT were summed feature 3, C12: 0, C16: 0, summed feature 2 and summed feature 8. The predominant respiratory quinone was ubiquinone Q-8. The main polar lipids were diphosphatidyglycerol, phosphatigylethanolamine, phosphatidyglycerol, one phospholipid and four unidentified glycolipids. The DNA G+C content was 59.3 mol % as determined by the melting temperature (Tm) method. Analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence indicated that the isolate represented a member of the genus Oceanisphaera and was closely related to Oceanisphaera arctica KCTC 23013T, Oceanisphaera litoralis DSM 15406T, Oceanisphaera sediminis KACC 15117T and Oceanisphaera donghaensis KCTC 12522T with 97.7 %, 97.1 %, 96.6 % and 96.6 % sequence similarity, respectively. The DNA–DNA hybridization values between strain LAM-WHM-ZCT and the four reference strains were 47.4¡2.8 %