Taxonomy — classifying viruses into genus, species and so forth — has the power to affect public healthFor the first time, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) will hold its annual meeting at University of Alabama at Birmingham, hosted by Elliot Lefkowitz, Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Microbiology. With some events sponsored by the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology, the meeting will take place July 28–30 at UAB’s newly opened Altec Styslinger Genomic Medicine and Data Sciences Building conference facilities on Seventh Avenue South, marking a significant milestone for the city and the university.
Approximately 25 global experts in virology will review hundreds of proposals for virus classification and naming. These proposals involve grouping newly discovered viruses based on shared properties, assigning them to new or existing species and higher taxonomic ranks, and officially naming them. Once approved by the Executive Committee, the proposals are submitted to the full ICTV membership for final ratification.
Viral taxonomy has power to affect public health. “When an outbreak of an infectious disease occurs, the first thing you do to identify the cause is to sequence patient or animal samples and try to identify the virus, bacteria or other infectious agents that may be responsible, Lefkowitz said. “Then, you compare the sequence to a database of all known sequences.
“If what you find is a virus, then you can make inferences about the potential properties of the new virus based upon the properties of the viruses that are most closely related. The ICTV taxonomy is what you would use to determine these relationships.”
This can even guide vaccine and antiviral drug development.
“If you know there were vaccines or antiviral drugs developed for related viruses, they can indicate possible approaches that can be used for the development of a new drug or vaccine to combat the new virus you’ve discovered and isolated,” he said. “That is the power of taxonomy. It gives you a reference point from which to better understand something new based upon other similar things.”
Elliot Lefkowitz, Ph.D.Global spotlight on Birmingham
The ICTV has held meetings across Europe, Asia, North America and Australia since the 1960s. Hosting the committee in Birmingham highlights the city’s growing role in global virology, through virologists and research at UAB, Lefkowitz says.
Beyond the immediate work of reviewing proposals, the ICTV will focus on refining the process of generating the taxonomy, working to develop “more logical, stepwise procedures to make virus classification easier and more automated,” Lefkowitz said.
Role and impact of ICTV
The ICTV is the official body responsible for virus classification and nomenclature. It decides what constitutes a species, a genus, a family, an order, and so forth, and what the names of those taxa are. This standardized framework provides a universal language for virus taxonomy, which is crucial for effective scientific communication, public health and policy development.
Recent advancements have expanded the taxonomy to include higher-order categories, such as realms, kingdoms and phyla. The ICTV has also made significant strides in classifying viruses discovered through large-scale metagenomic sequencing — the analysis of collective genomes of multiple microorganisms within a sample without needing to isolate and cultivate individual organisms. This enables scientists to identify new viruses from diverse environments and trace their evolutionary history.
Hosting the ICTV meeting recognizes UAB’s contributions over many decades to knowledge about virus biology and virus disease, and it provides a unique opportunity for researchers and students from Lefkowitz’s lab to interact with leaders in the field.
This event is not open to the public.
Written by: Khadija Khan