Opinion: Response to concerns about the use of DNA sequences as types in the nomenclature of prokaryotes

Ramon Rossello-Mora; Konstantinos T Konstantinidis; Iain Sutcliffe; William Whitman

doi:10.1016/j.syapm.2020.126070

Opinion: Response to concerns about the use of DNA sequences as types in the nomenclature of prokaryotes

Syst Appl Microbiol. 2020 Mar;43(2):126070. doi: 10.1016/j.syapm.2020.126070. Epub 2020 Feb 11.

Authors

Ramon Rossello-Mora¹, Konstantinos T Konstantinidis², Iain Sutcliffe³, William Whitman⁴

Affiliations

¹ Marine Microbiology Group, Department of Animal and Bacterial Diversity, IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), 07190 Esporles, Balearic Islands, Spain. Electronic address: rossello-mora@uib.es.
² School of Civil & Environmental Engineering and School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
³ Department of Applied Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
⁴ Department of Microbiology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA.

PMID: 32081606
DOI: 10.1016/j.syapm.2020.126070

Abstract

In the current Opinion we respond to the major concerns by Bisgaard et al. (2019) and Overmann et al. (2019) and conclude that the adoption of sequences as types for the names of prokaryotes will allow for improvements of the taxonomic framework, increased stability of names derived from robust phylogenomic methods, and enable a full circumscription of the microbial world rather than just the cultivated minority.

Keywords: Bacteriological Code; Nomenclature; Taxonomy; Type material; Uncultivated; Uncultured.

MeSH terms

Archaea / classification*
Archaea / genetics
Archaea / growth & development
Archaea / isolation & purification
Bacteria / classification*
Bacteria / genetics
Bacteria / growth & development
Bacteria / isolation & purification
DNA / genetics
Genome / genetics
Phylogeny
Terminology as Topic*

Substances

DNA