ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 29 March 2018 doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00512 Genotypic and Lipid Analyses of Strains From the Archaeal Genus Halorubrum Reveal Insights Into Their Taxonomy, Divergence, and Population Structure Rafael R. de la Haba 1†, Paulina Corral 1†, Cristina Sánchez-Porro 1, Carmen Infante-Domínguez 1, Andrea M. Makkay 2, Mohammad A. Amoozegar 3, Antonio Ventosa 1* and R. Thane Papke 2* Edited by: Haiwei Luo, 1 Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain, 2 Department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States, 3 Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Hong Kong Biology and Center of Excellence in Phylogeny of Living Organisms, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Reviewed by: Shaoxing Chen, To gain a better understanding of how divergence occurs, and how taxonomy can Anhui Normal University, China Lin Xu, benefit from studying natural populations, we isolated and examined 25 closely related Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, China Halorubrum strains obtained from different hypersaline communities and compared Heng-Lin Cui, Jiangsu University, China them to validly named species and other reference strains using five taxonomic study *Correspondence: approaches: phylogenetic analysis using the 16S rRNA gene and multilocus sequencing Antonio Ventosa analysis (MLSA), polar lipid profiles (PLP), average nucleotide identity (ANI) and DNA-DNA
[email protected] hybridization (DDH). 16S rRNA gene sequence could not differentiate the newly isolated R. Thane Papke
[email protected] strains from described species, while MLSA grouped strains into three major clusters. Two of those MLSA clusters distinguished candidates for new species.