Pending Reorganization of <i>Hantaviridae</i> to Include Only Completely Sequenced Viruses: A Call to Action
Jens H. Kuhn,
Steven B. Bradfute,
Charles H. Calisher,
Boris Klempa,
Jonas Klingström,
Lies Laenen,
Gustavo Palacios,
Connie S. Schmaljohn,
Nicole D. Tischler,
Piet Maes
Affiliations
Jens H. Kuhn
Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick, Division of Clinical Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Fort Detrick, Frederick, MD 21702, USA
Steven B. Bradfute
Department of Internal Medicine, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
Charles H. Calisher
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA
Boris Klempa
Institute of Virology, Biomedical Research Center, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 84505 Bratislava, Slovakia
Jonas Klingström
Division of Molecular Medicine and Virology, Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Linköping University, 581 83 Linköping, Sweden
Lies Laenen
Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Unit, KU Leuven, Rega Institute, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Gustavo Palacios
Department of Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA
Connie S. Schmaljohn
Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick, Division of Clinical Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Fort Detrick, Frederick, MD 21702, USA
Nicole D. Tischler
Laboratorio de Virología Molecular, Centro Ciencia & Vida, Fundación Ciencia & Vida, Santiago 8581151, Chile
Piet Maes
Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Unit, KU Leuven, Rega Institute, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
The official classification of newly discovered or long-known unassigned viruses by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) requires the deposition of coding-complete or -near-complete virus genome sequences in GenBank to fulfill a requirement of the taxonomic proposal (TaxoProp) process. However, this requirement is fairly new; thus, genomic sequence information is fragmented or absent for many already-classified viruses. As a result, taxon-wide modern phylogenetic analyses are often challenging, if not impossible. This problem is particularly eminent among viruses with segmented genomes, such as bunyavirals, which were frequently classified solely based on single-segment sequence information. To solve this issue for one bunyaviral family, Hantaviridae, we call on the community to provide additional sequence information for incompletely sequenced classified viruses by mid-June 2023. Such sequence information may be sufficient to prevent their possible declassification during the ongoing efforts to establish a coherent, consistent, and evolution-based hantavirid taxonomy.
