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Taxonomy and Halotolerance of Mesophilic Methanosarcina Strains, Assignment of Strains to Species, and Synonymy of Methanosarcina mazei and Methanosarcina frisia

¹Department of Environmental Science and Engineering
²Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences
³Oregon Graduate Institute, 19600 N.W. von Neumann Drive, Beaverton, Oregon 97006-1999, and School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90016

^* Corresponding author.

ABSTRACT

We examined 22 previously described and newly isolated Methanosarcina strains by performing denaturing gel electrophoresis of whole-cell proteins and assigned these strains to previously described species. Methanosarcina mazei S-6^T (T = type strain) and Methanosarcina frisia C 16^T were very similar in terms of the electrophoresis patterns of their proteins and in their DNA sequences (the results of reassociation experiments indicated that there was 77% sequence similarity). Thus, M. frisia is a junior subjective synonym of M. mazei, and strain C 16 is a reference strain of M. mazei. M. mazei C 16 was similar to M. mazei in other characteristics that have not been reported previously, including the ability to catabolize acetate and a lack of halophily. All of the Methanosarcina strains examined, including the marine strains M. mazei C 16 (= M. frisia C 16^T) and Methanosarcina acetivorans C2A^T, were slightly halotolerant (rather than halophilic, as originally described). Methanosarcina sp. strain FR-1, which has gas vesicles, was more similar to Methanosarcina barkeri MS^T than to Methanosarcina vacuolata Z-761^T in both its protein patterns and its DNA sequence (80% similarity to M. barkeri MS^T and 38% similarity to M. vacuolata Z-761^T). Thus, the presence of gas vesicles is not an adequate taxonomic characteristic for assigning Methanosarcina strains to M. vacuolata.

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