A plea for caution before changing bacterial names in databases

Jose Miguel Lopez-Coronao

Bacterial name changes arise from developments in the study of bacterial taxonomy, but the implications for human and animal health should be considered before a name change is made.

David Ellis

Nomenclature of microorganisms is essential for clinical practice, diagnostic accuracy, patient safety, and the payment of healthcare services. I support this initiative because changes should be made prudently - as much as necessary, as little as possible.

Learn-Han Lee

I support this petition.

Patrick Mc Gann

It can be extremely problematic when new names are assigned on a whim and without going through the proper channels. This petition is a step in the right direction!

Michael Arabatzis

I often meet useful sites such as NCBI Taxonomy adopting the newest nomenclature proposals before a general consensus

Lucas Domínguez

Markus Göker, thank you very much for this initiative. It was becoming much needed at this point.

Ian Laurenson

As a clinical microbiologist and infection specialist this is a real issue and often leads to unecessary confusion and risks, eg in the field of mycobacteriology.

Renata Safrankova

I fully support this initiative — it's very useful!

Katja Strašek Smrdel

I daily use NCBI database for 16s rRNA sanger sequencing and compare results with cultivation of bacteria. Sometimes I find discrepancies in NCBI names and valid names. We use 16S sequencing in routine diagnostics.

Chris Field

Renaming taxa only serves a purpose when an organism has been reclassified, otherwise it's just adding confusion to an already complicated system. Established names should be kept wherever possible.

Peter Michael Keller

Frequent, often unnecessary changes of bacterial names in public databases such as GenBank create significant practical burdens in clinical diagnostics. They require time-consuming updates of laboratory SOPs, informatics systems (LIS), reports, and internal databases, while increasing the risk of communication errors between clinicians, laboratories, and regulatory bodies. Name changes also affect EUCAST/CLSI breakpoints, national risk group classifications, diagnostic regulations, and GMP.

Gisli Einarsson

Clarity must outweigh confusion. While taxonomy should evolve with new evidence, changes to clinically relevant bacterial names should be carefully considered to preserve consistency, traceability, and clear communication between laboratories, researchers, and clinicians.

Aliyu Dabai

The petition is important to me as a microbiologist

Geertje Van Keulen

Legally important regulations depend on consistent namegiving.

Sheila Patrick

The committee to mitigate changes in prokaryotic nomenclature was set up as a result of a @Microbiology Society supported meeting I organised in 2023 https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/ijsem/10.1099/ijsem.0.006844. As a founding member of the committee I strongly support this initiative which is so important for all practical microbiology, be it medical, agricultural, ecological or industrial

Garrett Gordy

It’s way to hard to keep up and it is confusing for clinicians and labs alike

Dagmar M.

Velmi souzním s touto peticí.

Emilia Bălulescu

We confuse clinician, we loose trasability o the results: in Maldi we have a name and we have to write on results both names.

Linda Veloo

All these name changes hinder the recognization of clinical relevant bacterial isolates.

Some sort of regulation is required as databases are increasingly containing incorrect nomenclature. Some changes are also leading to clinical confusion