Comments

The advantage of the proposed geminivirus nomenclature system is that many species and strains causing identical symptoms in a host in the same location can be named without ambiguity (see Figure 1). By building the name of a geminivirus with the primary host and symptom description and finishing with the strain and isolate description, the system moves from general to specific identification. In addition, names can be extended to include subsequent isolates or other information. This type of nomenclature has been in use to name animal viruses (e.g., members of family Orthomyxoviridae [5]). Our proposal also takes into account the general rules adopted by the plant virology community (and accepted by the Executive Committee of the ICTV) in naming the plant viruses [5].

Our proposal calls for keeping the host and symptom description at the beginning of the name. It is common for all the plant virus names to include terms referring to symptoms and therefore each time a new virus species is described, one must consider the most typical and frequent symptoms induced by the virus. There are many terms available for describing symptoms: for example, leaf curl, yellow leaf curl, yellow mosaic, mottle, severe leaf curl, and leaf crumple (for an updated list, see [2]). It should be noted that the ICTV does not recommend a virus genus or family name as a part of species name (e.g., tomato geminivirus) and also that a geographical origin and a plant name are not enough to name a virus (e.g., Texas pepper virus).

If a particular host and symptom description (i.e., vernacular name) has already been used for a virus, the two identical names can be distinguished by adding a geographical location name before the word “virus.” When abbreviating the new virus name, the list of previously used abbreviations for plant viruses [2] should be consulted to avoid repetitions. For abbreviating the country of isolation, the standard two letter (upper case) code available at "http://www3.four11.com/cgi-bin/four11main?country" may be used (e.g., TH for Thailand, AU for Australia, IN for India, ZA for South Africa, SN for Senegal…). When abbreviating names of locations that are not country names or any other word (symptoms, hosts…) a three letter code (upper and lower case) may be used (e.g., Ban for Bangalore, Mul for Multan, Sin for Sinaloa, Sar for Sardinia, Mld for Mild, Com for common, etc.).

There is a general agreement among virologists that a taxonomic level need not necessarily be associated with a virus name. Our proposal allows the flexibility of using isolate names between brackets when one is not sure if the newly identified isolate is a strain of a previously characterized virus. The nomenclature system for geminiviruses proposed here allows the addition of species and strain information when available.