Oleiphilus

During the last few years, efforts to isolate indigenous marine microbes by extinction dilution in artificial seawater containing hydrocarbons have yielded taxonomically and physiologically new obligate hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria from different sites all over the world. One such organism is Oleiphilus, a gram-negative, aerobic, motile, rod-shaped bacterium that uses a narrow spectrum of organic compounds restricted to aliphatic hydrocarbons, alkanoles, and alkanoates, as carbon and energy sources. Phenotypic, metabolic, and genetic analyses show that this bacterium represents a distinct lineage in the Gammaproteobacteria with about 91% sequence identity to Marinobacter and Alcanivorax, the closest genera. Although several years have passed since the first isolation and valid publication in 2002, the genus Oleiphilus is still represented by the single species O. messinensis, and the type strain ME102 remains the sole isolate.