The Genome-Based Virus Taxonomy with ICTV Database Extension.

In 1966, the International Classification of Viruses (ICNV) was established to standardize the naming of viruses. In 1975, the organization was renamed 'ICTV', by which it is still known today. The primary virus classification provided by ICTV in 1971 was for viruses infecting vertebrates, which includes 19 genera, 2 families, and a further 24 unclassified groups. Presently, the 10th virus taxonomy has been published. However, early classification of viruses was based on the clinical results of "in vivo" and "in vitro", as well as on the shape of PhynoType virus. However, due to the development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) and the accompanying bioinformatics analysis pipelines, a reconstruction of the classification system has been proposed. At a meeting held in Boston, USA between June 9-11, 2016, even there was an in-depth discussion regarding the classification of viruses using Metagenomic data. One suggested activity that arose from the meeting was that viral taxonomy should be reconstructed, based on genotype and bioinformatics analysis "in silico". This article describes our efforts to achieve this goal by construction of a web-based system and extension of an associated database, based on ICTV taxonomy. This virus taxonomy web system was specifically designed to extend the virus taxonomy up to strain and isolation, which was then connected with the NCBI database to facilitate searching for specific viral genes; there are also links to journals provided by the EMBL RESTful API that improve accessibility for academic groups.