Working Virologists and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)
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Virology Division News
Working Virologists and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) E. B. Carstens Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
There is an ongoing dialogue concerning the ability of ICTV to meet the needs of the world virology community in a timely fashion. It has been suggested [3] that ICTV has not consulted all members of the virological community who wish to be involved in the development of virus taxonomy and that ICTV does not ensure all virologists are openly invited to help with ICTV work. Having been a member of the Executive Committee (EC) of the ICTV since 1993, I have had the opportunity to see ICTV in action. It seems that there are two major groups of virologists: 1) those interested in virus taxonomy and nomenclature, and 2) those who are not interested. Sometimes, these divisions follow virus family demarcations. As with many things in life, those who are interested are usually the ones who have to make decisions and who are willing to do the work. I have been to many ICTV meetings at which certain areas of virology have been under-represented because those individuals or groups who said they would do something, in fact did nothing. I have also been the recipient of numerous E-mails extolling the reader to provide information related to mundane (name, address, email address) or timely (responses to comments on proposals, or to provide taxonomic proposals) issues. The ICTV has never intentionally impeded information flow but, rather, has done its best to move ahead evolving and exciting areas of virology by using the most up-to-date tools at its disposable, given the meagre resources that are available. The ICTV is also committed to publishing a list of all known viruses species approximately every three years. There are new viruses emerging all the time and we usually see these first mentioned in the literature. From the chaos of individuals creating their own favorite name for a new virus (TT virus is an example) to international disagreements on nomenclature (Sin Nombre virus is a great example of this), ICTV has tried to develop a set of rules and regulations to help investigators name and suggest classification for new viruses and to provide guidelines for the nomeclature and taxonomy of all viruses. The speed at which this is done rests with individuals. Two recent examples of how the ICTV facilitates this work are provided here. The Sixth Report of the ICTV, published in 1995, listed a number of unassigned viruses in addition to those classified at that time. The unassigned viruses included numerous small RNA viruses that infect various insect species and were considered to be possible members of the family Picornaviridae. This list included Cricket paralysis virus, Drosophila C virus and Gonometa virus. They were generally referred to as “picorna-like
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Virology Division News
viruses” because they shared many morphological and physical properties with mammalian picornaviruses, including a positive-sense
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