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Biology LibreTexts

9.3A: The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses

  • Page ID
    • Contributed by Boundless
    • General Microbiology at Boundless

    The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) establishes guidelines to maintain viral family uniformity.

    Learning Objectives

    • Describe the purpose and objectives of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses

    Key Points

    • Only a small part of the total diversity of viruses has been studied. Analyses of samples from humans found that about 20% of the virus sequences recovered have not been seen before.
    • The general taxonomic structure is as follows: Order (-virales); Family (-viridae); Subfamily (-virinae); Genus (-virus); Species (-virus).

    Key Terms

    Figure: Microbial taxonomy: Taxonomic ranks

    The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) is a committee which authorizes and organizes the taxonomic classification of viruses. They have developed a universal taxonomic scheme for viruses and aim to describe all the viruses of living organisms. Members of the committee are considered to be world experts on viruses. The committee formed from and is governed by the Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiological Societies. Detailed work such as delimiting the boundaries of species within a family is typically done by study groups, which consist of experts in the families. The committee also operates an authoritative database (ICTVdB) containing taxonomic information for 1,950 virus species, as of 2005. It is open to the public and is searchable by several different means.

    The official objectives of the ICTV are:

    1. To develop an internationally agreed upon taxonomy for viruses.
    2. To develop internationally agreed upon names for virus taxa, including species and subviral agents.
    4. To maintain an index of virus names.
