🔬 Phage Takes

Bacteriophage Ecology Group News, or BEG News, was published mostly quarterly as an online newsletter for a total of 26 issues, starting July 1, 1999 and continuing through December 31, 2007. As follows is a reprint of the editorial from the newsletter, authored by Hans-Wolfgang Ackermann and Stephen T. Abedon. Also included in issues were lists of new members to the Bacteriophage Ecology Group, an introduction to new website features, a list of upcoming meetings, phage images found on the web (remember, this was 2001, so effectively pre-Google), etc., but most of all, a listing of new phage ecology-related publications. The newsletter was modelled after T4 News, which was a printed newsletter distributed earlier in the 1990s. The newsletter's successors are the ongoing Phage.org website, phage-therapy.org, and the Bacteriophage Ecology Group Facebook page.

The first bacteriophage known to science was the Bacteriophagum intestinale described by Félix d'Hérelle (3), an enterobacterial phage or a mixture of phages that was considered by d'Hérelle as a single virus with many races. In 1961 Eisenstark published the first list of phages, which included 111 phages with tailed, cubic or filamentous morphology (4). A second phage list, published by Fraenkel-Conrat in 1974, included 411 bacterial viruses and the dimensions and physicochemical properties of many of them (5). Unfortunately, phage names with Greek letter ϕ were reported without this letter. At present, over 5000 bacteriophages have been studied by electron microscopy and can be attributed to 11 virus families.

During 80 years, phage names have been constructed in the absence of any system and usually reflect little more than their author's imagination (or lack thereof). Phage nomenclature is therefore in a primitive and confusing state. Phage names may:

1. Be single letters or numerals in any combination, even names of individuals or cities.
2. Include Greek letter ϕ or the Latin letter P to indicate phage status.
3. Include special types (superscript or infrascript characters, dots, dashes).
4. Vary between authors, studies, even printer conventions.

As a result, (i) phage names do not reflect basic phage properties, (ii) synonyms and homonyms abound, and (iii) some designations are unduly complicated and a printer's nightmare. Certain synonyms of enterobacterial phages are even willful creations of investigators who published one and the same virus up to six times under different designations. Further ambiguities are created by the identity of some Roman letters and numerals (I, V), or are the product of odd printer conventions (witness, for the latter, the ambiguous numeral subscript status of the original T phages of Escherichia coli B; 2). However, one notes that quite numerous phage names have been constructed from host names and therefore reflect host ranges, and that names of temperate phages often comprise two elements, one for the phage and another for the host strain.

Eighty years after the discovery of phages, it is clearly too late to construct a nomenclature system that reflects basic phage properties such as nucleic acid or particle shape. The most that can be done is to limit the amount of synonyms and homonyms. The practice of constructing phage names from host names should be continued as it gives at least a clue to the phage. We suggest the following:

1. To use the first two letters of the host genus and the host species names, respectively (e.g., Esco for Escherichia coli).
2. To complement the above constructs with any letters or numerals (e.g., Esco1).
3. To avoid the over-used letters ϕ and P.
4. To avoid superscript or infrascript characters, parentheses, or dashes.
5. To check phage-name lists (e.g., "Bacteriophage Names 2000") for naming precedent.
6. To avoid the invention of new names for old phages.
7. For a description of ICTV nomenclature rules.
8. To obtain rules on virus genera and families see Van Regenmortel, M.H.V., Fauquet, C.M., Bishop, D.H.L. (eds.-in-chief). 2000. Virus Taxonomy. Classification and Nomenclature of Viruses. Seventh Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. Academic Press, San Diego, pp. 1065-1069. The latest ICTV taxonomy report is available at ICTV taxonomy.

For reference, see "Bacteriophage Names 2000", which presents these names alphanumerically, by phage family, and by host genera.

Hans-Wolfgang Ackermann
Félix d'Hérelle Reference Center for Bacterial Viruses, Laval University, Quebec, Canada

Stephen T. Abedon
Department of Microbiology, The Ohio State University, Mansfield, Ohio

References

1.  Ackermann, H.-W. 2001. Bacteriophage descriptions in the year 2000. Archives of Virology 146:843-857. 10.1007/s007050170120
2.  Demerec, M., and Fano, U. 1945. Bacteriophage-resistant mutants in Escherichia coli. Genetics 30:119-136.
3.  D'Hérelle, F. 1918. Technique de la recherche du microbe filtrant bactériophage (Bacteriophagum intestinale). C.R. Soc. Biol. 81:1160-1162.
4.  Eisenstark, A. 1967. Bacteriophage techniques. In: Maramorosch, K., Koprowski, H. (eds.), Methods in Virology, vol. 1. Academic Press, New York, pp. 449-525.
5.  Fraenkel-Conrat, H. 1974. Descriptive catalogue of viruses. In: Fraenkel-Conrat, H., Wagner, R.R. (eds.), Comprehensive Virology, vol. 1. Plenum Press, New York, pp. 121-156.

See Also

https://namecheck.phage.org/ — a tool for checking bacteriophage name availability and precedent.