A plea for caution before changing bacterial names in databases

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

I completely agree. We need to support our clinicians in diagnostics and therapy and not to confuse them.

Indeed, too many taxonomical name changes are causing confusion.

Doporučuji zachovat šetrně nomenklaturu hlavně patogenních bakterií.

I completely agree.

I completely agree. We need to support our clinicians in diagnostics and therapy and not to confuse them.

I agree.

From the point of view of communicating the results vie informatics system, frequent changes in the nomenclature bring many problem on many levels and it's definitely important to think twice about each change.