Desulfosarcina widdelii sp. nov. and Desulfosarcina alkanivorans sp. nov., hydrocarbon-degrading sulfate-reducing bacteria isolated from marine sediment and emended description of the genus Desulfosarcina Watanabe, Miho and Higashioka, Yuriko and Kojima, Hisaya and Fukui, Manabu,, 67, 2994-2997 (2017), doi = https://doi.org/10.1099/ijsem.0.002062, publicationName = Microbiology Society, issn = 1466-5026, abstract= In previous studies, two hydrocarbon-degrading sulfate-reducing bacteria, strains PP31T and PL12T, were obtained from oil-polluted marine sediments of Shuaiba, Kuwait. They had been reported as organisms capable of anaerobic degradation of p-xylene and n-alkanes, respectively. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain PP31T showed 98.8 % sequence similarities to that of Desulfosarcina variabilis ‘Montpellier’T. Strains PL12T had 97.8 % of sequence similarity to Desulfosarcina ovata oXys1T. They both have been partially characterized, but not been validly published as new species of the genus Desulfosarcina . In this study, additional characterizations of these strains were made to describe them as two new species of the genus Desulfosarcina . Major cellular fatty acids of strain PP31T were C15 : 0 (25.9 %) and anteiso-C15 : 0 (22.3 %), whereas those of strain PL12T were C15 : 0 (21.3 %), C16 : 0 (17.8 %) and anteiso-15 : 0 (11.6 %). The phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA gene revealed that these isolates should not be classified as any of the known species in the genus Desulfosarcina . On the basis of phenotypic and phylogenetic analyses, these two sulfate reducers are proposed to form two novel species of the genus Desulfosarcina : Desulfosarcina widdelii sp. nov. (PP31T=JCM 31729T=DSM 103921T) and Desulfosarcina alkanivorans sp. nov. (PL12T=JCM 31728T=DSM 103901T). In addition, emended description of the genus Desulfosarcina is presented in this study., language=, type=