The Type Strain Genome Server (TYGS) is an easy-to-use tool for state-of-the-art genome-based taxonomy. As evidenced by the thousands of citations to the Nature Communications and Nucleic Acids Research papers on TYGS, it is a widely used system. Many taxonomists and identification services use it routinely. TYGS has been stable for years, serving many users from different countries and providing reliable results in a timely manner. TYGS is hosted by the Leibniz Institute DSMZ as part of DSMZ Digital Diversity. As a non-profit, government-funded, non-university research institution, the DSMZ should be ideally suited for the long-term maintenance of bioinformatics services and databases such as TYGS.

However, during times of political and economic crisis in many European countries, including Germany, as well as in other regions of the world, the question of allocating scarce financial and personal resources becomes increasingly critical. This applies to societies, where the question arises as to what proportion of the budget should be devoted to science, to science itself, where the question arises as to which projects should be supported by major science funding organisations, and to individual institutes, where the question arises as to which services should be supported and to what extent.

Therefore, it is of great interest to the future of TYGS to determine who is using TYGS, how frequently, and for which purposes. It is also important to identify which past and present users would be severely affected if TYGS became unusable, or would be affected if it becomes inaccessible in the future. We therefore ask everyone who has used or is currently using TYGS to sign this petition to indicate that the system is crucial for their work. Any more specific comments on the importance of TYGS would also be greatly appreciated.