ICTV in San Francisco: a report from the Plenary Session

Abstract

At the International Congress of Virology (ICV) in San Francisco in July 2005, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) held a Plenary Session. This note summarizes the reports made to the meeting by the President and the chairs of the ICTV subcommittees acknowledged at the end of this note. It also reports the results of elections to positions on the ICTV Executive Committee (EC) and changes made to the statutes that govern how ICTV operates. President's reportThe composition of the EC will change greatly after the Congress because three of the four officers, 5 of the 6 subcommittee chairs and 5 of the 8 elected members will change. The memberships of the ICTV EC for 2002 to 2005 and for 2005 to 2008 (following the results of the elections at the Plenary Session) are shown in Table 1.

Cheravirus and Sadwavirus: two unassigned genera of plant positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses formerly considered atypical members of the genus Nepovirus (family Comoviridae)

“…The ICTV Study Group on Comoviridae has addressed this question and proposed that several viruses that were previously considered ''atypical nepoviruses'' should be included into two newly created genera, Cheravirus and Sadwavirus, which so far could not be assigned to a family. These taxonomy proposals were approved by ICTV in 2003 [23,24,29]. The rationale for the creation of these genera is given below with respect to a list of criteria, and discussed in the light of newly published data.…”

Analysis of complete genome sequences of swine hepatitis E virus and possible risk factors for transmission of HEV to humans in Korea

“…Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is the causative agent of acute hepatitis in humans. HEV has recently been classified into the genus Hepevirus of the family Hepeviridae [Mayo and Ball, 2006]. HEV has no envelope and a single-stranded positive-sense RNA genome of approximately 7.2-kb in length [Tam et al, 1991].…”

Searching for foreign antigens as possible triggering factors of autoimmunity: Torque Teno virus DNA prevalence is elevated in sera of patients with bullous pemphigoid

“…Torque Teno virus was known as a member of the virus family Circoviridae, though it was recently proposed to be reordered to a newly created virus genus, Anellovirus (6). At the time of TTV's discovery, no other human virus was known to have single-stranded DNA as hereditary material.…”