Soonwooa buanensis gen. nov., sp. nov., a member of the family Flavobacteriaceae isolated from seawater Phylogenetic analyses showed that strain HM0024 T formed an independent phyletic line of descent within the family Flavobacteriaceae. The DNA G+C content of the strain was 29.6 mol% and its major cellular fatty acids (.10 %) were iso-C 15 : 0 , iso-C 17 : 0 3-OH, iso-C 17 : 1 v7c and summed feature 3 (C 16 : 1 v6c and/or C 16 : 1 v7c). The major isoprenoid quinone was MK-6 and the major polar lipids were phosphatidylethanolamine and several aminolipids. Strain HM0024 T was differentiated from phylogenetically related members of the family by having lower DNA G+C content, larger proportions of summed feature 3, anteiso-C 15 : 0 and iso-C 16 : 0 3-OH and particular phenotypic characteristics. On the basis of phenotypic and phylogenetic data, strain HM0024 T is classified as a representative of a novel genus and species, for which the name A seawater sample from the coastal surface of the Yellow Sea (Buan beach, Korea; 35 u 409 N 126 u 319 E) was serially diluted, spread onto nutrient agar (NA; BD Difco) and incubated aerobically at 30 u C. After 2 days of incubation, a yellow colony-forming strain, designated HM0024 T , was isolated and stored as a suspension in nutrient broth (NB; BD Difco) with 15 % (v/v) glycerol. For further taxonomic studies, the strain was maintained routinely at 30 u C on NA.The methods employed for DNA extraction, PCR amplification and sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene were essentially the same as described in a previous study (Cho & Giovannoni, 2003). The almost-complete 16S rRNA gene sequence (1449 bp) of strain HM0024T was aligned automatically using the PT server implemented in the ARB software package (Ludwig et al., 2004) and the alignment was checked manually. 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities were calculated from the sequence alignment in the ARB package and were confirmed by the EzTaxon server (Chun et al., 2007). Sequence comparisons showed that strain HM0024T was closely associated with several members of the genera Chryseobacterium and Elizabethkingia of the family Flavobacteriaceae. The strain was most closely related to Chryseobacterium balustinum LMG 8329 T (94.4 %), Chryseobacterium scophthalmum LMG 13028 T (94.4 %), Chryseobacterium piscium LMG 3These authors contributed equally to this work.The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain HM0024 T is FJ713810.