Hanna Oksanen

Eight colonies of live microbes were isolated from an extensively surface-sterilized halite sample which had been retrieved from a depth of 2000 m from a salt mine in the Qianjiang Depression, Hubei Province, PR China. The eight colonies, obtained after 4 weeks of incubation, were named JI20-1 T –JI20-8 and JI20-1 T was selected as the type strain. The strains have been previously described, including a genomic analysis based on the complete genome for strain JI20-1 T and draft genomes for the other strains. In that study, the name Halobacterium hubeiense was suggested, based on the location of the drilling site. Previous phylogenomic analysis showed that strain JI20-1 T is most closely related to the Permian isolate Halobacterium noricense from Alpine rock salt. The orthologous average nucleotide identity (orthoANI) and digital DNA–DNA hybridization (dDDH) percentages between the eight strains are 100–99.6 % and 99.8–96.4 %, respectively. The orthoANI and dDDH values of these strains with respect to the type strains of species of the genus Halobacterium are 89.9–78.2 % and 37.3–21.6 %, respectively, supporting their placement in a novel extremely halophilic archaeal species. The phylogenomic tree based on the comparison of sequences of 632 core-orthologous proteins confirmed the novel species status for these haloarchaea. The polar lipid profile includes phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol phosphate methyl ester, phosphatidylglycerol sulfate, and sulfated galactosyl mannosyl galactosyl glucosyl diether, a profile compatible with that of Halobacterium noricense . Based on genomic, phenotypic, and chemotaxonomic characterization, we propose strain JI20-1 T (=DSM 114402 T = HAMBI 3616 T ) as the type strain of a novel species in the genus Halobacterium , with the name Halobacterium hubeiense sp. nov.