Naming, Taxonomy, Classification of viruses - Essay Example

Other examples of pathogens include the nematodes, fungi and bacteria. In Biology, the term nomenclature is used to refer to the naming the various taxonomic groups as per the international conventions. When it comes to the naming of viruses, there is a special body tasked with this responsibility. It is called the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), (formerly known as the International Committee on the Nomenclature of Viruses) which was established in 1966. It is the committee of the Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiological Societies.

Unlike the nomenclature of other living organisms, viruses are not named with respect to Carolus Linnaeus’ Latinized binomial system. They are named by use of words of English origin new international taxonomic names this is according to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, R. I. B. Francki (1991). Rule No. 10 – rules pertaining the spelling of names with respect to the language used are outlined in Section 6 of Chapter 3 of the proposed viral nomenclature. This is as per the minutes of the meeting held in Moscow in 1966, Rule No.

13 - where agreed upon, the symbols may come after an abbreviation of a Latin name of a given host genus of a particular host, but if need be, a full name instead of the abbreviation may still be used, When it comes to the taxonomy of viruses, which is the classification of viruses into various taxonomic groups, the International Committee n Taxonomy of Viruses came up with a unified taxonomy. The classification system makes use of the below ranked taxons; The current list from the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) indicates that there are three (3) viral orders namely; Caudovirales – these are the tailed double stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (dsDNA) phages, Mononegavirales – these are the ones having enveloped globular virons bearing similar single stranded negative ribonucleic acid (ss (-) RNA) genomes and