More than 50% of the microbial phyla in genome taxonomy databases lack a cultured representative. Although these genome sequences unambiguously delineate microbial taxa, they cannot be formally named under the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes due to the requirement for a pure-culture type strain. We are working towards developing a solution for naming these uncultivated Archaea and Bacteria: the SeqCode initiative.
The SeqCode is a new code of nomenclature that is based on using DNA sequence as the type information for the basis of evidence.
We invite you to look at the tabs above to get background information on nomenclature systems, the rationale and development of this initiative, and links to the literature surrounding this topic.