Virgibacillus siamensis sp. nov

Moderately halophilic bacteria are widely distributed in many kinds of fermented foods: for example, strains of Jeotgalibacillus alimentarius were found in jeotgal in Korea (Yoon et al., 2001), Lentibacillus juripiscarius and Lentibacillus halophilus, Tetragenococcus halophilus and T. muriaticus in Thai fi sh sauce (Namwong et al., 2005; Tanasupawat et al., 2006; Thongsanit et al., 2002), Bacillus vietnamensis in Vietnamese fi sh sauce (Noguchi, 2004), Salinicoccus siamensis, Lentibacillus kapialis, and Oceanobacillus kapialis in Thai fermented shrimp paste (Namwong et al., 2009; Pakdeeto et al., 2007a, b), and Piscibacillus salipiscarius, Salinivibrio siamensis and Gracilibacillus thailandensis in salt-fermented fi sh (pla-ra) in Thailand (Chamroensaksri et al., 2009, 2010; Tanasupawat et al., 2007). In the course of our study on the diversity of halophilic bacteria in fermented fi sh in Thailand, we newly isolated 41 isolates of moderate halophiles from pla-ra. The subsequent taxonomic characterization revealed that they were composed of six groups, distributed J. Gen. Appl. Microbiol., 56, 369‒379 (2010)