A novel actinobacterium, designated HIsM16-52T, was isolated from beach sand collected from Ishigaki Island in Japan and its taxonomic position was investigated by a polyphasic approach. Strain HIsM16-52T contained both lysine and ornithine as the diagnostic diamino acids of the peptidoglycan. The predominant isoprenoid quinone was MK-8(H4) and the major fatty acids were anteiso-C15 : 0, C16 : 0 and C14 : 0. The detected polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol and two unidentified phospholipids. The DNA G+C content was determined to be 73.4 mol%. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequence comparison revealed that strain HIsM16-52T fell within the cluster of the family Beutenbergiaceae and formed a reliable cluster with the members of the genus Serinibacter. The highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities were obtained to species of the genus Serinibacter(97.8-97.9 %), followed by the genera Miniimonas (97.0 %), Beutenbergia (96.4 %) and Salana (95.9 %). However, strain HIsM16-52T differed from the members of the genus Serinibacter and the other genera within the family Beutenbergiaceae in terms of chemotaxonomic characteristics. Therefore, strain HIsM16-52T is concluded to represent a novel genus and species of the family Beutenbergiaceae, for which the name Litorihabitans aurantiacus gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of L. aurantiacus is HIsM16-52T (=NBRC 112290T=TBRC 7759T).
Keywords: Beutenbergiaceae; Litorihabitans aurantiacus; actinobacteria; beach sand; polyphasic taxonomy.