International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)

News

Naming the 2019 Coronavirus

UPDATE: The virus causing the current outbreak of coronavirus disease has been named "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" (SARS-CoV-2). The manuscript describing the name also reports the work of the ICTV Coronaviridae Study Group that determined the virus belongs to the existing species, Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus.

The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) is concerned with the designation and naming of virus taxa (i.e. species, genus, family, etc.) rather than the designation of virus common names or disease names. For an outbreak of a new viral disease, there are three names to be decided: the disease, the virus and the species. The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for the first, expert virologists for the second, the ICTV for the third.

As experts on coronaviruses, the ICTV Coronaviridae Study Group is currently studying the classification (taxonomy) of the new virus. And given that they are experts on this family of viruses, they are also contributing their expertise to the naming of the virus.

Binomial Nomenclature for Species Names

The article, "Binomial nomenclature for virus species: a consultation" has now been published in Archives of Virology:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00705-019-04477-6

Comments and further discussion on the topics raised in the article can be discussed in the Binomial Species Name forum.

Files pertinent to this discussion can be found at https://ictv.global/files/binomial.

Past News

Fifty Years of Virus Taxonomy

Navigating Menus

Information: Members, FAQs, Code and Statutes, History, News, Newsletters, VDN articles.
Taxonomy: Current and historical ICTV taxonomic databases
Files: Taxonomy Proposals, Master Species Lists, Proposal templates, and other ICTV-related files.
Discussions: Discussions about the ICTV and virus taxonomy.
Study Groups: Information on virus families provided by ICTV Study Groups.
Meetings: Reports from ICTV-sponsored meetings addressing current problems in virus taxonomy.
ICTV Reports: Online versions of the current 10th and previous 9th Reports on Virus Taxonomy.

Help!

For questions or help, send an email to info@ictvonline.org

Useful Resources

ICTV Taxonomy Release #34: 2018b

The new 2018b ICTV taxonomy is now available online at https://ictv.global/taxonomy.

The new ICTV Master Species List 34, 2018b is available for download as an Excel Spreadsheet.

This new release contains taxonomic changes approved by the ICTV membership in February, 2019. One major change is that all RNA viruses have been moved under the new taxon, Riboviria, at the rank of Realm.

A paper describing this release has been published in an Archives of Virology, Virology Division News article:"Changes to virus taxonomy and the International Code of Virus Classification and Nomenclature ratified by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (2019)".

Official taxonomy proposals representing all of the taxonomic changes approved by the ICTV since the publication of the ICTV 8th Report can be found at https://ictv.global/Official_ICTV_Proposals.htm.

ICTV Online Report on Virus Taxonomy

The ICTV Report on Virus Taxonomy (also known as the 10th Report) is available in an open access format from this web site at https://ictv.global/report. ICTV Study Groups are updating the information from 9th Report chapters; producing chapters for newly created virus taxa; and updating current chapters as new taxa are created and new viruses discovered.

Journal of General Virology:
ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profiles

Summaries of the Online Report chapters are published in the Journal of General Virology, ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profiles section. These summaries are linked to the full Online Report chapters on the ICTV website and are indexed in PubMed.

The Virus Metadata Resource

The Virus Metadata Resource (VMR) is a downloadable spreadsheet that provides information on exemplar viruses for each species. This information includes GenBank and RefSeq accession numbers for exemplar viruses and isolate and common names for viruses belonging to a species. The most recent VMR release adds information on the known categories of hosts infected by the virus or the source environment from which the virus was isolated. New VMR Release posted November 27, 2019.

How to write virus and species names

A document and FAQ detailing the ICTV's recommendation for how to write virus and species names is now available. (Updated May 28, 2019)

Why virus taxonomy is important

The article, "Why virus taxonomy is important", published in Microbiology Today by Stuart Siddell, ICTV Vice President, discusses the importance of virus taxonomy and its role in helping to define the evolutionary relationships between viruses and understand the consequences of virus diversity.

ICTV in Nucleic Acids Research

An article appearing in the Nucleic Acids Research 2018 Database issue, "Virus taxonomy: the database of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)" describes the ICTV database and the web-based tools available to query that database: Lefkowitz EJ, Dempsey DM, Hendrickson RC, Orton RJ, Siddell SG, Smith DB. Nucleic Acids Res. 2017 Oct 13. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkx932. PubMed PMID: 29040670.

Submitting Taxonomic Proposals

ICTV welcomes taxonomic proposals from any interested individual. To submit a proposal, download and complete the relevant parts of the proposal template and e-mail it to the appropriate subcommittee chair (Animal DNA Viruses and Retroviruses, Animal dsRNA and ssRNA- Viruses, Animal ssRNA+ Viruses, Bacterial and Archaeal Viruses, Fungal and Protist Viruses, or Plant viruses).

International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)