ArticlePLoS biology2023
Four principles to establish a universal virus taxonomy.
Article in PLoS biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 89 papers.
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Who cites it
89 citing papers in PubMed, 129 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Mining viruses in public databases unveils the diversity within the Deltaflexiviridae family.Archives of virology · 2026Article
- Biographical Feature: In memory of Dennis Henry Bamford (1948-2025), who changed how we see viruses.Journal of virology · 2026Article
- Programmatic access to ICTV virus taxonomy through a public ontology API.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Ten quick tips for classifying unknown bacteriophage.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Virus taxonomy and the ICTV - 21 FAQs for the perplexed virologist.The Journal of general virology · 2026Review
- Uncovering viral protein acquisition events and human-specific folds with pairwise comparisons of predicted protein structures.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Amarilloviruses of Aquatic Animals.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Isolation, characterization and genomic analysis of a novel lytic bacteriophage EcoPhCCP1, capable of infecting multiple strains of multidrug-resistantThe Journal of general virology · 2026Article
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- Virus taxonomy: the database of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
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- Comprehensive hallmark gene sequence, genomic and structural analysis clarifies new and established taxa within theVirus evolution · 2026Article
- Recent advances in biomarkers for cardiac fibrosis.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2026Review
- vClassifier: a toolkit for high-resolution phylogenetic classification of prokaryotic viruses.Bioinformatics advances · 2026Article
- Machine learning enables scalable and systematic hierarchical virus taxonomy.Nature biotechnology · 2025Article
- Taxonomic update for the giant algal chloroviruses of the family Phycodnaviridae.Archives of virology · 2025Article
- Viro3D: a comprehensive database of virus protein structure predictions.Molecular systems biology · 2025Article
29 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
43 authors at 20 institutions in 19 countries.
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Abstract
A universal taxonomy of viruses is essential for a comprehensive view of the virus world and for communicating the complicated evolutionary relationships among viruses. However, there are major differences in the conceptualisation and approaches to virus classification and nomenclature among virologists, clinicians, agronomists, and other interested parties. Here, we provide recommendations to guide the construction of a coherent and comprehensive virus taxonomy, based on expert scientific consensus. Firstly, assignments of viruses should be congruent with the best attainable reconstruction of their evolutionary histories, i.e., taxa should be monophyletic. This fundamental principle for classification of viruses is currently included in the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) code only for the rank of species. Secondly, phenotypic and ecological properties of viruses may inform, but not override, evolutionary relatedness in the placement of ranks. Thirdly, alternative classifications that consider phenotypic attributes, such as being vector-borne (e.g., "arboviruses"), infecting a certain type of host (e.g., "mycoviruses," "bacteriophages") or displaying specific pathogenicity (e.g., "human immunodeficiency viruses"), may serve important clinical and regulatory purposes but often create polyphyletic categories that do not reflect evolutionary relationships. Nevertheless, such classifications ought to be maintained if they serve the needs of specific communities or play a practical clinical or regulatory role. However, they should not be considered or called taxonomies. Finally, while an evolution-based framework enables viruses discovered by metagenomics to be incorporated into the ICTV taxonomy, there are essential requirements for quality control of the sequence data used for these assignments. Combined, these four principles will enable future development and expansion of virus taxonomy as the true evolutionary diversity of viruses becomes apparent.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.