Abstract
Out of forty rhizosphere soils collected from semi arid tropical regions of Andhra Pradesh, India, 30 gave positive enrichments for heliobacteria. These bacteria were recognized by the presence of bacteriochlorophyll-g together with endospores in the initial enrichments. Using group specific primers of 16S rRNA gene, ten monoheliobacterial cultures were sequenced. They were finally grouped into 3 clusters based on the 16S rRNA gene similarity. Based on a few phenotypic characters, in addition to genetic characterization, we identified them as potential novel species and the 16S rRNA gene sequences were deposited with EMBL.