LAUSR

A Gram-stain positive, non-motile, spherical, red-pigmented and facultatively anaerobic bacterium, designated strain 6.1T, was isolated from a crude oil recovery water sample from the Huabei oil field in China. The novel strain exhibited tolerance of UV irradiation (> 1000 J m−2). Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons, strain 6.1T shows high similarity to Deinococcus citri DSM 24791T (98.1%) and Deinococcus gobiensis I-0T (97.8%), with less than 93.5% similarity to other closely related taxa. The major cellular fatty acids were identified as summed feature 3 (C16:1ω7c and/or iso-C15:0 2-OH), followed by iso-C17:1ω9c and C16:0. The polar lipid profile was found to contain phospholipids, glycolipids, phosphoglycolipids and aminophospholipids. The predominant respiratory quinone was identified as MK-8. The DNA G + C content was determined to be 68.3 mol %. DNA–DNA hybridization between strain 6.1T and D. citri DSM 24791T was 45.6 ± 7.1% and with D. gobiensis I-OT was 36.6 ± 4.7%. On the basis of phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic and phenotypic data, we conclude strain 6.1T represents a novel species of the genus Deinococcus, for which we propose the name Deinococcus petrolearius sp. nov. The type strain is 6.1T (= CGMCC 1.15053T = KCTC 33744T).