A new section on description of plant viruses, same spirit, new looks

Abstract

The “Descriptions of Plant Viruses” (DPV) started in 1970 with the publication of a description of cucumber mosaic virus. The immediate antecedent of this series of loose-leaf descriptions of the best known viruses of plants was “A Textbook of Plant Virus Diseases” by Kenneth Smith published in 1937 (Smith, 1937). However, by the time its second edition was published in 1957, it was clear that a more flexible form of publication was required to record details of the burgeoning number of plant viruses that were being found and reported. The scale of the problem was shown by E. B. Martyn, who, with help from a large number of plant virologists, published in 1968 “Plant Virus Names: An annotated list of names and synonyms of plant viruses and diseases” (Martyn, 1968), which contained the names of over 1,000 viruses, and its supplement 3 years later added another 300. One of us (A.J.G.) was one of those who helped Eldred Martyn, and on one visit to the Commonwealth Mycological Institute (CMI), then in Kew, was shown the CMI loose leaf “Descriptions of Pathogenic Fungi and Bacteria”, which was the most flexible system of publication then available. A subsequent discussion with Bryan Harrison and then with CMI led to the printing of a trial description of cucumber mosaic virus for distribution and discussion at the First International Congress of Plant Pathology in London in July 1968. The idea was generally approved, and there are now over 400 DPVs published. The DPVs describe the best-known viruses, but there are many times more viruses that are less well described. An attempt to use even more flexible ways to record these using computers resulted in the VIDE (Virus Identification Data Exchange) project, which concluded with the book “Viruses of Plants: Description and Lists from the VIDE database” (Brunt et al., 1996) with its data incorporated in the CABI Database and also in the short-lived database of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which later abandoned virus properties to focus on formal virus names. In 1998, the Association of Applied Biologists (AAB) scanned all of the 354 DPVs published by that time and converted them into an electronic format, generating a database distributed on CD-ROM. Later on, the descriptions were made available on a new DPV web site which incorporated a number of useful instruments, including sequence searches and analysis tools (Adams & Antoniew, 2006). Significant changes of the web database and DPVs did not take place during the 2010–2020 decade. In 2020, the AAB virology group decided to refresh the look of the database, and therefore the old URL was discontinued while preparing the new one. During this short period of time, we received numerous comments, complaints and suggestions, many from young researchers, all in the same direction: The DPV database was a very valuable instrument for them and should continue. That was encouraging, so the virology group designed a procedure to motivate authors to prepare new or updated DPVs. The new DPV web (https://www.dpvweb.net/dpv) was launched during the AAB International Advances in Plant Virology 2021 conference, where it was received enthusiastically. For updating or preparing new DPVs, Annals of Applied Biology became involved and has sponsored the opening of this new section, for which the excellent paper from Nellist et al. (2022) on turnip mosaic virus is the first example. We would like to encourage prospective authors to address Annals of Applied Biology Senior Editors and/or members of the AAB virology group to propose new DPVs; peer reviewed new DPVs will be both published in the journal and included in the web database. The DPVs have stood the test of time in providing a carefully curated source of information, and act as exemplars of the information required to describe a virus properly. One reviewer of Kenneth Smith's first edition stated that “viruses are objectively unknown” except “by their effects” and “by the diseases they produce”. This situation gives a sense of vagueness to any work on viruses. Such writing, while the best possible under the circumstances, recalls to this reviewer the sensations he had as a boy in trying to read some of the religious writers who gave “detailed descriptions of the Deity as based on accounts of his activities as set forth in holy writings”. The DPVs show how far we have come!