Most prokaryotes cannot easily be grown in the laboratory and distributed as pure cultures. Thus, these organisms could not be officially named. A code of nomenclature — the SeqCode — provides paths to name such organisms on the basis of genomic data, aiming to unify field and laboratory studies in microbiology.
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References
Whitman, W. B. Modest proposals to expand the type material for naming of prokaryotes. Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 66, 2108–2012 (2016). This paper proposes changes to the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICNP) that would enable DNA sequence data to serve as nomenclatural types, in addition to strains.
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This is a summary of: Hedlund, B. P. et al. SeqCode: a nomenclatural code for prokaryotes described from sequence data. Nat. Microbiol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01214-9 (2022).
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Towards a unifying system for the naming of cultured and uncultured prokaryotes. Nat Microbiol 7, 1514–1515 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01220-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01220-x