AUSTRALIA—GERMANY WORKSHOP ON BIODIVERSITY

The Shine Dome, 13-17 March 2006

Biodiversity informatics: lessons from the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses database (ICTVdB) on the Web since 1993
by Dr Barry Osmond, School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Australian National University

Authoritative consensual nomenclature agreed to by an international committee of experts remains vital to the progress of biological research, from the molecule to the biosphere. The Database of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTVdB) was conceived as a taxonomically oriented database that should hold diverse data at all levels to produce original descriptions of all virus families, genera and species. These relatively simple, but rapidly evolving, biological entities represent an excellent model system, but also confront general issues in biodiversity informatics. Among other things, ICTVdB was tasked with linking the agreed taxonomy of viruses to sequence databases, making precise identification available to all areas of virus research. However, with rapid developments in sequence analysis, the emphasis now lies on the collation of primary isolates rather than derived species, which will make the database much more valuable to research through online data submission and analysis. Major sequence (GenBank, UniProt) and taxonomic (Species2000, GBIF) databases link to ICTVdB to reference up-to-date virus taxonomy. Some distinctive features of ICTVdB, issues of sustainability and opportunities for Germany-Australia collaboration will be discussed.