MLSA barcoding of Marichromatium spp. and reclassification of Marichromatium fluminis (Sucharita et al., 2010) as Phaeochromatium fluminis gen. nov. comb. nov.

Thirty-one members of the genus Marichromatium were analysed based on multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) of four concatenated protein-coding genes (fusA, pufM, dnaK, recA) along with the internal transcribed spacer (ITS; 16S-23S rRNA) region and 16S rRNA gene. The restriction patterns obtained from the in silico analysis of the concatenated sequences were good barcodes for the identification of Marichromatium spp. Distinct phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and molecular differences allowed the separation of Marichromatium fluminis JA418(T) into a new genus in the family Chromatiaceae, for which we propose the name Phaeochromatium fluminis gen.

Marichromatium litoris sp. nov. and Marichromatium chrysaorae sp. nov. isolated from beach sand and from a jelly fish (Chrysaora colorata).

Three strains (JA349(T), JA553(T), JA439) of phototrophic sulphur bacteria were isolated from marine habitats of India. 16S rRNA gene sequence of the three strains clustered phylogenetically with members of the genus Marichromatium of the family Chromatiaceae belonging to the class Gammaproteobacteria. All the strains shared highest sequence similarity with the type strains of Marichromatium spp.