Poster Session: Biology and Disease Management - Regulatory Plant Pathology
403-P
A new exclusively genome-based species-independent taxonomic framework for all life forms applied to Pseudomonas syringae.
B. A. VINATZER (1), H. A. Elmarakeby (1), A. J. Weisberg (1), C. L. Monteil (1), L. S. Heath (1)
(1) Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, U.S.A.
Next generation sequencing is revealing an immense genetic diversity of bacteria. In order to classify, describe, and name this diversity, we urgently need a new taxonomic framework that is applicable to all different levels of diversity, i.e., above and below the currently defined species level. Additionally, description and naming of taxonomic groups need to become much faster than the current practice of publishing peer-reviewed descriptions of named bacterial species in order to keep up with the ever-increasing speed of microbial discoveries. We previously proposed to assign to every individual genome-sequenced organism a code, called Life Identification Number (LIN), which can precisely reflect its similarity to all related organisms. Here we go one step further and propose the concept of genome similarity-based taxonomic groups, which we call LIN groups. LIN groups are independent of any species concept and organisms auto-assemble into LIN groups based solely on genome similarity. Genetic, phenotypic, and epidemiological descriptions can be linked to LIN groups whereby type strains provide the connection between LIN groups and named species. We show the potential of the proposed system for the taxonomy of plant pathogenic bacteria and regulatory purposes using publicly available genomes of the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae.