Chapter 9 - A Polyphasic Taxonomic Approach for Designation and Description of Novel Microbial Species

Abstract

Bacterial taxonomy is studied to provide adequate information on identity and uniqueness of a species in their ecological, clinical, and industrial niche environments. The polyphasic taxonomy approach used in nomenclature and systematic of a novel Bacteria and Archaea includes a combination of chemotaxonomic, phenotypic, and genotypic data. However, due to several limitations in the use of % similarity in 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, DNA–DNA hybridization (DDH), and mol% of G+C content methods in polyphasic taxonomy are facing severe competition from the information generated by whole-genome sequences. Microbial genomics taxonomy fueled by next-generation sequencing provide rapid and cost-effective approaches to obtain genomic information coupled with computational tools, thus increasing the credibility of new taxonomic approaches. New analytical methods of genome analysis are portable and have greater discriminatory power to replace conventional DDH but are not yet accepted as alternative techniques for taxonomy. This chapter outlines current methods for polyphasic taxonomy, microbial genomics taxonomy and genome data analysis. It also includes overview of approaches for incorporating genomics into new strain identification to new taxon description workflows. These new insights and tools will be gradually introduced in the polyphasic taxonomic practice in future.