Private Correspondence

A Gram-staining-positive, strictly aerobic, spherical, non-motile, red-pigmented bacterium, designated strain MK03T, was isolated from a soil sample collected in South Korea. The taxonomic position of the novel strain was investigated using a polyphasic approach. In phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, strain MK03T was placed in a clade formed by members of the genus Deinococcus in the family Deinococcaceae and appeared to be most closely related to Deinococcus aerolatus 5516T-9T (97.4 % sequence similarity), Deinococcus marmoris AA-63T (97.2%), Deinococcus radiopugnans ATCC 19172T (97.2%) and Deinococcus saxicola AA-1444T (96.9%). The genomic DNA G+C content of the novel strain was 64.5 mol%. The chemotaxonomic characteristics of strain MK03T were typical of members of the genus Deinococcus: MK-8 was identified as the predominant respiratory quinine, the major fatty acids were C16: 1v7c, C15: 1v6c, C16: 0 and C15: 0, ornithine was found to be the diamino acid in the cell-wall peptidoglycan and the novel strain showed resistance to gamma radiation, with a D10 value (i.e. the dose required to reduce the bacterial population by 10-fold) in excess of 9 kGy. In hybridization experiments, only low DNA–DNA relatedness values (11.6– 34.5%) were recorded between the novel strain and its closest relatives in the genu