The ICTV Report
Virus Taxonomy: The ICTV Report on Virus Classification and Taxon Nomenclature
The new 2020 ICTV taxonomy is now available online at https://ictv.global/taxonomy. The new Master Species List #36 is available for download as an Excel Spreadsheet. This new release contains taxonomic changes approved by the ICTV Executive Committee in July, 2021 and ratified by the ICTV Membership in March, 2021. A paper describing this release will be published in the Virology Division News section of Archives of Virology. Official taxonomy proposals documenting these and all other 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.
A paper that provides a primer on how to write virus species names using the new binomial format has been published in the Virology Division News section of Archives of Virology: Zerbini FM, Siddell SG, Mushegian AR, Walker PJ, Lefkowitz EJ, Adriaenssens EM, Alfenas-Zerbini P, Dutilh BE, García ML, Junglen S, Krupovic M, Kuhn JH, Lambert AJ, Łobocka M, Oksanen HM, Robertson DL, Rubino L, Sabanadzovic S, Simmonds P, Suzuki N, Van Doorslaer K, Vandamme AM, Varsani A. Differentiating between viruses and virus species by writing their names correctly. Arch Virol. 2022 Jan 19. doi: 10.1007/s00705-021-05323-4. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35043230.
2021 sees the 30th anniversary of the collaboration between Springer (now SpringerNature), which publishes Archives of Virology (ARVI), and the Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (VD-IUMS). This formal collaboration was heralded in an editorial written by the then journal Editor-in-Chief Dr. Frederick A. Murphy and published in the March 1991 issue of volume 116, announcing that ARVI had become the “Official Journal of the Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiological Societies”. Moreover, a special section named “Virology Division News” (VDN) was to be established to promote “papers and proceedings of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)”. The inaugural article in this series was launched in the same volume and was authored by the first Section Editor Dr. Marian Horzinek. This paper presented the scope of the new section, with a vision that it should become “a platform for communicating many kinds of information of general interest to virologists around the world”. A particular emphasis was to be placed on “coverage of taxonomic matters”, either formally by the ICTV or in the form of informal input from groups of virologists interested in that niche of virology. The section is managed by the VDN Section Editor, who is also a member of the ICTV Executive Committee (EC). 30 years of Virology Division News in Archives of Virology. |
Submit Your Taxonomy Proposal for 2022New taxonomy proposals for 2022 can now be submitted. Templates for submitting proposals are available from https://ictv.global/proposal_templates/. These 2022 templates MUST be used for all submissions. Please download all four files and read the Help file for detailed information on the submission process.
A paper that discusses issues related to the taxonomic classification of viruses discovered through metagenomic sequencing has been published in Current Opinion in Virology: Dutilh BE, Varsani A, Tong Y, Simmonds P, Sabanadzovic S, Rubino L, Roux S, Muñoz AR, Lood C, Lefkowitz EJ, Kuhn JH, Krupovic M, Edwards RA, Brister JR, Adriaenssens EM, Sullivan MB. Perspective on taxonomic classification of uncultivated viruses. Curr Opin Virol. 2021 Dec;51:207-215. doi: 10.1016/j.coviro.2021.10.011. Epub 2021 Nov 12. PMID: 34781105.
Stuart Siddell (ICTV Vice President) and Andrew Davison (past ICTV President) discuss the importance of virus taxonomy, classification, and naming in this International Science Council blog post. |
For previous news announcements, please see https://talk.ictvonline.org/information/w/news
Navigating Menus
The Virus Metadata ResourceThe 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, July 2021
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 subcommitee chair (Animal DNA Viruses and Retroviruses, Animal dsRNA and ssRNA- Viruses, Animal ssRNA+ Viruses, Archaeal Viruses, Bacterial Viruses, Fungal and Protist Viruses, or Plant viruses). New templates for 2022 are now available.
|
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.
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.
Why virus taxonomy is importantThe 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 ResearchAn 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. |
ICTV gratefully acknowledges financial support from the American Society for Virology, Microbiology Society, the Virology Division of IUMS, Wellcome, the Australasian Virology Society, the Société Française de Virologie (SFV), and the Finnish Biochemical, Biophysical, and Microbiological Society / Societas Biochemica, Biophysica et Microbiologica Fenniae. ICTV also very gratefully acknowledges the support it receives from all its Executive Committee members, Study Group members and National Representatives who volunteer a huge amount of their time and financial support to ensure that ICTV continues to function for the good of virology. We would also like to thank Donald Dempsey and Curtis Hendrickson from the University of Alabama at Birmingham for their work on the development of the web site and taxonomy database.
