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Defining viral species: making taxonomy useful
Virus taxonomy at present is best characterized as a categorization of convenience, without a firm basis in the principles of evolutionary biology. Specifically, virus species definitions appear to depend more on tradition and popular opinion among virologists than on firm, quantitative biological e...
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| Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
| Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2014
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| Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4222810/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25055940 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1743-422X-11-131 |
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| author | Peterson, A Townsend |
| author_facet | Peterson, A Townsend |
| author_sort | Peterson, A Townsend |
| collection | PubMed |
| description | Virus taxonomy at present is best characterized as a categorization of convenience, without a firm basis in the principles of evolutionary biology. Specifically, virus species definitions appear to depend more on tradition and popular opinion among virologists than on firm, quantitative biological evidence. I suggest a series of changes to underlying species concepts that would shift the field from one that simply files viruses away in taxonomic boxes to one that can learn important biological lessons from its taxonomy. |
| format | Online Article Text |
| id | pubmed-4222810 |
| institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | BioMed Central |
| record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
| spelling | pubmed-42228102014-11-07 Defining viral species: making taxonomy useful Peterson, A Townsend Virol J Commentary Virus taxonomy at present is best characterized as a categorization of convenience, without a firm basis in the principles of evolutionary biology. Specifically, virus species definitions appear to depend more on tradition and popular opinion among virologists than on firm, quantitative biological evidence. I suggest a series of changes to underlying species concepts that would shift the field from one that simply files viruses away in taxonomic boxes to one that can learn important biological lessons from its taxonomy. BioMed Central 2014-07-23 /pmc/articles/PMC4222810/ /pubmed/25055940 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1743-422X-11-131 Text en Copyright © 2014 Peterson; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
| spellingShingle | Commentary Peterson, A Townsend Defining viral species: making taxonomy useful |
| title | Defining viral species: making taxonomy useful |
| title_full | Defining viral species: making taxonomy useful |
| title_fullStr | Defining viral species: making taxonomy useful |
| title_full_unstemmed | Defining viral species: making taxonomy useful |
| title_short | Defining viral species: making taxonomy useful |
| title_sort | defining viral species: making taxonomy useful |
| topic | Commentary |
| url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4222810/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25055940 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1743-422X-11-131 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT petersonatownsend definingviralspeciesmakingtaxonomyuseful |