Topic: "Virus Surveillance: Tools to Claddify the Unknown" 

Presenter: Elliott  J. Lefkowitz, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Microbiology 

Director of Informatics, Center for Clinical and Translational Science 

Director, Molecular and Genetic Bioinformatics Facility, Center for AIDS Research 

Director, Bioinformatics Core, Microbiome Facility
UAB Heersink School of Medicine

Organisms and the viruses that infect them can only be understood in the context of their relationships. This begins with the delineation of common and distinguishing properties and is formalized by the science of taxonomy which creates an ordered, hierarchical system of classification and nomenclature.

For over 50 years, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has formally provided scientists, students, government agencies, and the interested public with a burgeoning taxonomy for viruses along with the resources for exploiting that taxonomy.

The ICTV communicates the results of its work on a web site (https://ictv.global) that provides the current virus taxonomy, historical taxonomic records, and descriptive information on each virus family (the ICTV Report). As Data Secretary for the ICTV, I have received NIH funding to significantly expand the information and tools provided by the ICTV.

Our goal is to build a comprehensive biomedical knowledgebase supporting virus classification that will serve as a novel, scalable, sustainable infrastructure for supporting transformative research by virologists worldwide.

Our aims focus on utilizing this infrastructure to provide increased availability and breadth of taxonomic and virological information; better tools to manage taxonomic classification and handling of data supporting high-throughput virus classification and curation; enhanced accessibility to individuals, groups, and information repositories; and an outreach and training program to ensure that the products of our efforts are used to benefit stakeholders and to promote better understanding of viruses and their classification.

Our intention is to make virus classification and taxonomy more approachable and more useful to the virology and wider scientific community and for the ICTV web site to serve as a useful and used conduit for these expanded resources.