An oval to rod shaped phototrophic purple nonsulfur bacterium, strain JA192T was isolated from an enrichment culture of a pasteurized rhizosphere soil sample of jowar crop collected from Godumakunta village, near Hyderabad, India. Strain JA192T is Gram-negative, motile and produces endospores. Phylogenetic analysis on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that the strain JA192T is closely related to Rhodobacter sphaeroides DSM 158T (99.9% sequence similarity), Rhodobacter megalophilus JA194T (99.8%) and Rhodobacter azotoformans JCM 9340T (98.1%) and clusters with other species of the genus Rhodobacter of the family Rhodobacteraceae. However, DNA-DNA hybridization with Rba. sphaeroides DSM 158T, Rba. megalophilus JA194T and Rba. azotoformans JCM 9320T showed a relatedness of only 38-57% with respect to JA192T. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, DNA-DNA hybridization data, morphological, physiological and chemotaxanomic characters, strain JA192T represents a novel species of the genus Rhodobacter, for which the name Rhodobacter johrii sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is JA192T (= DSM 18678T = JCM 14543T = MTCC 8172T)
