Naming microorganisms: the contribution of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, Marseille, France

• Main Authors: J.-C. Lagier, M. Bilen, F. Cadoret, M. Drancourt, P.-E. Fournier, B. La Scola, D. Raoult
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2018-11-01
• Series: New Microbes and New Infections
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2052297518300660

The number of isolated new microorganisms has dramatically increased after the readaption of culture using the culturomics approach. Each of these microorganisms is deposited in an international strain collection institute, with its name being attributed and published by the scientist who isolated it. The attributed name is of Latin or Latinized origin and chosen on the basis of the geographical location of the sample collection, the institute or geographical region where the project was being performed, the name of a concerned scientist, and characteristics of the sample or the microorganism. Our institution has played an important role in the isolation of new microorganisms, with the first effort reporting 468 new bacterial species (3% of the bacterial species isolated at least once worldwide) and 327 species isolated for the first time from human beings, which in turn resulted in an increase of 30% of the total number of microorganisms isolated. Additionally, more than 100 giant viruses, including seven new species, have been isolated at our institute. In the present work, after recalling the rules of nomenclature, we detail the naming of the new microorganisms chosen at our laboratory. The most common species name was massiliensis, attributed 161 times. We consider it imperative for the cultivators, who have frequently made considerable efforts in the field of microbial culture, to be the ones who name the newly isolated microorganisms, taking into consideration the Latinized nomenclature standards. Keywords: Archaea, Culturomics, Giant virus, Human microbiota, New bacterial species, Taxonogenomics