Proposed nomenclature guidelines

The general goal of our proposals is to keep most of the existing names in place so as to create a minimum of changes. All our proposals comply with the ICTV (International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses) Universal Code for Nomenclature [5] and the abbreviations have been cross-checked with the official list published by the ICTV [2]. The ICTV Universal Code for Nomenclature stipulates that a virus name should comprise more than one word in addition to the word “virus.” These additional words may include, but are not restricted to, host name, symptom descriptors, or location of isolation, but should not include the name of the discoverer. The word “virus” should be the last word in the name, but additional words, letters, and numbers may be added to characterize strains, serogroups, genotypes, or isolates of viruses.

In the case of geminiviruses, to avoid confusion and provide as many names as possible for the increasing number of species, it is proposed that the geographical location of the first isolation of the virus be added within the core of the virus name before the word “virus” (e.g., Tomato yellow leaf curl Sardinia virus , TYLCSV). This method retains much of the usual nomenclature; and in a list of virus names all the viruses causing yellow leaf curl in tomato will be listed together. This system is widely used for animal and human viruses, and therefore should be easily accepted by the ICTV. Because the location of isolation can be the names of rivers, cities, regions, or countries, it offers a great deal of freedom for creating new species names.

It is proposed that the first published name of a virus species be retained without any additions; for example, Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) will be the name of the virus isolated in Israel, and Tomato leaf curl virus (ToLCV) will be the name of the virus isolated in Australia.

It is also proposed to keep names with a significant history, such as African cassava mosaic virus (ACMV), even though they may not follow the guidelines that we propose here.

The list of virus names, given below, follows these guidelines, and location names already in use have been integrated into the name. However, in some instances, when there was more than one species for a unique location (e.g., cotton leaf curl viruses from Faisalabad in Pakistan), we have used the names of nearby cities. The importance of the name of the location of the first isolate is only in differentiating one virus from another; it is well understood that a virus species can be found in much larger areas than a single city or even a single country. The names of nations is discouraged wherever possible to increase variety and to avoid political implications (as e.g., CLCuV-Pakistan and CLCuV-India).

In addition to the virus species name, it is proposed that a geminivirus name contain supplementary information for strain and isolate identification, and we propose to add it in the following sequence:

Virus species name {host-symptom-location-virus} - strain identification [isolate identification]

A dash (-), and brackets ([ ]) are used to separate the species name from strain and isolate identifications, respectively.