Isolation and Characterization of Methanothermobacter crinale sp. nov., a Novel Hydrogenotrophic Methanogen from the Shengli Oil Field

ABSTRACT Syntrophic acetate oxidation coupled with hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis is an alternative methanogenic pathway in certain thermophilic anaerobic environments such as high-temperature oil reservoirs and thermophilic biogas reactors. In these environments, the dominant thermophilic methanogens were generally related to uncultured organisms of the genus Methanothermobacter. Here we isolated two representative strains, Tm2T and HMD, from the oil sands and oil production water in the Shengli oil field in the People's Republic of China. The type strain, Tm2T, was nonmotile and stained Gram positive. The cells were straight to slightly curved rods (0.3 μm in width and 2.2 to 5.9 μm in length), but some of them possessed a coccal shape connecting with the rods at the ends. Strain Tm2T grew with H2-CO2, but acetate is required. Optimum growth of strain Tm2T occurred in the presence of 0.025 g/liter NaCl at pH 6.9 and a temperature of 65°C. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 40.1 mol% ± 1.3 mol% (by the thermal denaturation method) or 41.1 mol% (by high-performance liquid chromatography). Analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence indicated that Tm2T was most closely related to Methanothermobacter thermautotrophicus ΔHT and Methanothermobacter wolfeii VKM B-1829T (both with a sequence similarity of 96.4%). Based on these phenotypic and phylogenic characteristics, a novel species was proposed and named Methanothermobacter crinale sp. nov. The type strain is Tm2T (ACCC 00699T = JCM 17393T).