Strengthening the Interaction of the Virology Community with the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) by Linking Virus Names and Their Abbreviations to Virus Species

This work was supported by Battelle Memorial Institute?s prime contract with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under Contract No. HHSN272200700016I (J.H.K.), by US National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant R24 AI120942 (S.C.W and N.V.), and by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, National Library of Medicine (J.R.B.). S.S. acknowledges support from Mississippi State University (MSU)?Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (MAFES) Strategic Research Initiative grants. This work was also funded in part under ContractNo. HSHQDC-15-C-00064 awarded by DHS S&T for the management and operation of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC), a federally funded research and development center (V.W.) Colorado State University. College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology. Arthropod-borne and Infectious Diseases Laboratory. Fort Collins, CO, USA. 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Department of Pathobiology. Institute of Virology. Veterin?rplatz, Vienna, Austria / Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences. Department of Basic Medical Sciences. College of Medicine. Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Minist?rio da Sa?de. Secretaria de Vigil?ncia em Sa?de. Instituto Evandro Chagas. Ananindeua, PA, Brasil. Texas A&M University. Veterinary Medical Sciences Building. College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Department of Veterinary Pathobiology. TX, USA. United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Molecular and Translational Sciences. Frederick, MD, USA. Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, S?dufer. Institut f?r Virusdiagnostik. Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany / Universit?tsklinikum Freiburg. Institut f?r Virologie. Freiburg, Germany. Mississippi State University. Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Entomology and Plant Pathology. Mississippi State, MS, USA. 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Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick. Frederick, MD, USA. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) is tasked with classifying viruses into taxa (phyla to species) and devising taxon names. Virus names and virus name abbreviations are currently not within the ICTV's official remit and are not regulated by an official entity. Many scientists, medical/veterinary professionals, and regulatory agencies do not address evolutionary questions nor are they concerned with the hierarchical organization of the viral world, and therefore, have limited use for ICTV-devised taxa. Instead, these professionals look to the ICTV as an expert point source that provides the most current taxonomic affiliations of viruses of interests to facilitate document writing. These needs are currently unmet as an ICTV-supported, easily searchable database that includes all published virus names and abbreviations linked to their taxa is not available. In addition, in stark contrast to other biological taxonomic frameworks, virus taxonomy currently permits individual species to have several members. Consequently, confusion emerges among those who are not aware of the difference between taxa and viruses, and because certain well-known viruses cannot be located in ICTV publications or be linked to their species. In addition, the number of duplicate names and abbreviations has increased dramatically in the literature. To solve this conundrum, the ICTV could mandate listing all viruses of established species and all reported unclassified viruses in forthcoming online ICTV Reports and create a searchable webpage using this information. The International Union of Microbiology Societies could also consider changing the mandate of the ICTV to include the nomenclature of all viruses in addition to taxon considerations. With such a mandate expansion, official virus names and virus name abbreviations could be catalogued and virus nomenclature could be standardized. As a result, the ICTV would become an even more useful resource for all stakeholders in virology.