Halobacterium salinarum strain MMD047-A low-salt adapted member of the Halobacteriaceae?

In a paper recently in Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering (vol. 14, pp. 67-75), Shanmughapriya and coworkers described a prokaryote (strain MMD047) isolated from a marine sponge, which they classified as a strain of Halobacterium salinarum. As the strain grows at low salinity only, its behavior is greatly different from that of other Halobacterium isolates. In spite of multiple requests, the strain has not been made available for further studies and we therefore call upon the authors of the paper to release their interesting isolate for an in-depth taxonomic characterization.