J. Gen. Appl. Microbiol., 48, 251–259 (2002)

An accumulation of knowledge with respect to biodiversity on the earth has continued for many years because of its great importance and the interest in investigating it. But further studies are necessary for bacterial biodiversity to reach the stage of complete elucidation. Moreover there is a trial calculation that only 1% of bacteria that actually exist on earth have been isolated (Rondon et al., 1999). During the past few years bacterial biodiversity studies have been getting clearer with the rapid progress of molecular phylogenetic studies based on 16S rDNA analysis of microbial assemblages (Schleper et al., 1997) or fluorescence in situ hybridization with rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes (Aznar et al., 1994). Many proofs that bacterial biodiversity is much wider than previously thought have been reported one after another (Suzuki et al., 1997). However these results are not obtained from cultures but as sequences of amplified genes. The aim of the present paper is to isolate, characterize, and identify marine bacteria which have not been known as genetic resources. We focused on the intestines of marine creatures, especially molluscs, as a source of isolation to search out novel lineages of bacteria for the following reasons. Attempts to isolate miA preliminary report of phylogenetic diversity of bacterial strains isolated from marine creatures