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Friedhelm Pfeiffer, Gerald Losensky, Anita Marchfelder, Bianca Habermann and Mike Dyall‐Smith

Finally the paper was online today in MicrobiologyOpen at (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mbo3.974). It is a detailed description of the genome of Hbt. salinarum strain 91‐R6 (DSM 3754), which is the type strain of the genus. We have compared it to the two well-studied laboratory strains R1 and NRC-1, which were sequenced many years ago. The type strain has only rarely been studied, and as Aharon Oren said in 2012, “it is to be regretted that no genomic information is available for the nomenclatural type” – but now it is available for everyone to examine and enjoy!! Genbank accessions are CP038631.1, CP038632.1, and CP038633.1.

In 2012, Aharon Oren wrote a review on the family Halobacteriaceae, where he pointed out with some surprise that the “type species of the type genus of the family and the order” had not yet been sequenced. This was despite the genomes of strains R1 and NRC-1 having been reported years previously. I am happy to say that today this deficit has been remedied, as described in our recent publication in Microbial Resource Announcements, and sequence submissions to Genbank, under accessions  CP038631 (chromosome), CP038632 (pHSAL1), and CP038633 (pHSAL2). Assembly of these replicons was not a straightforward task, as there were very large repeats, and considerable genomic variability. We are currently working on a more detailed analysis of this sequence.