Heterotrophic bacteria from brackish water of the Southern Baltic Sea: biochemical and molecular identification and characterisation

Six bacterial strains isolated from the surface water of the southern Baltic Sea were described on the basis of their morphological, physiological and biochemical features, and were classified on the basis of 16S rDNA sequence analysis. Comparative analyses of the 16S rDNA sequences of five of the six bacterial strains examined displayed a ≥98% similarity to the sequences available in the NCBI GenBank. The 16S rDNA sequence of strain 2 shared only a 96% similarity with other published sequences, which suggests that this is a new, hitherto unknown species. The isolated heterotrophic bacteria belong to the families Bacillaceae (strain 1), Flexibacteriaceae (strain 2), Sphingomonadaceae (strains 3, 5), Micrococcaceae (strain 4) and Aurantimonadaceae (strain 6). This is the first study in which the polyphasic approach has been applied to the identification of heterotrophic bacteria from the brackish waters of the Gulf of Gdańsk and Gdańsk Deep.