Version 1: Emendation of cellular fatty acid composition of gliding marine bacteria belonging to the genus Aureispira

Aureispira marina and Aureispira maritima are gliding marine bacteria with high content of arachidonic acid in cellular lipids isolated from southern coastline of Thailand. In the previous reports (Hosoya, et al., Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol., 56, 2931-2935, 2006, Hosoya et al., Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol., 57, 1948-1951, 2007) only small amounts (less than 5%) of 3-hydroxy fatty acids were detected as cellular hydroxy fatty acids, but recently we found that these bacteria were abundant in 2-hydroxy fatty acids as components of ceramides in their lipids. In the present study cellular fatty acids of these bacteria were reexamined, and the combined ratio of 2-hydroxy fatty acids, composed of iso-17:1 2-OH, iso-17:0 2-OH, and 16:1 2-OH, was shown to be more than 40% of total amount of fatty acids. As the high content of 2-hydroxy fatty acids is a characteristic chemotaxonomic feature of these bacteria, we propose the emendation of cellular fatty acid composition of the above species belonging to the genus Aureispira according to the results in this study.