The status Candidatus for uncultured taxa of Bacteria and Archaea: SWOT analysis

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)
2 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The status Candidatus was introduced to bacterial taxonomy in the 1990s to accommodate uncultured taxa defined by analyses of DNA sequences. Here I review the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) associated with the status Can-didatus in the light of a quarter century of use, twinned with recent developments in bacterial taxonomy and sequence-based taxonomic discovery. Despite ambiguities as to its scope, philosophical objections to its use and practical problems in imple-mentation, the status Candidatus has now been applied to over 1000 taxa and has been widely adopted by journals and data-bases. Although lacking priority under the International Code for Nomenclature of Prokaryotes, many Candidatus names have already achieved de facto standing in the academic literature and in databases via description of a taxon in a peer-reviewed publication, alongside deposition of a genome sequence and there is a clear path to valid publication of such names on culture. Continued and increased use of Candidatus names provides an alternative to the potential upheaval that might accompany creation of a new additional code of nomenclature and provides a ready solution to the urgent challenge of naming many thou-sands of newly discovered but uncultured species.

Original languageEnglish
Article number005000
JournalInternational Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology
Volume71
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Sep 2021

Keywords

  • Bacterial nomenclature
  • Candidatus
  • Genome-based taxonomy
  • Uncultured bacteria

Cite this