Tenacibaculum litopenaei sp. nov., isolated from a shrimp mariculture pond.

A yellow-coloured, aerobic, Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterial strain, designated B-I(T), was isolated from the water of a shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) mariculture pond in Taiwan. No species with a validly published name showed 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of more than 96.5 % to this novel isolate. The highest sequence similarities displayed by strain B-I(T) (93.2-96.1 %) were to members of the genus Tenacibaculum. The phenotypic properties of this organism were consistent with its classification in the genus Tenacibaculum. The novel isolate could be distinguished from all Tenacibaculum species by several phenotypic characteristics. The major fatty acids were iso-C(15 : 0) (22 %), summed feature 3 (C(16 : 1)omega7c and/or iso-C(15 : 0) 2-OH; 21.3 %), iso-C(17 : 0) 3-OH (12.7 %) and iso-C(15 : 1) (8.7 %). The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 35.2 mol%. Hence, genotypic and phenotypic data demonstrate that strain B-I(T) should be classified within a novel species in the genus Tenacibaculum, for which the name Tenacibaculum litopenaei sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is B-I(T) (=BCRC 17590(T)=LMG 23706(T)).