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Minutes |
Minute 1. Call to order.
The meeting was called to order by the Chairman, Niall A. Logan, at 14 : 00 on 30 July 2002 in Le Palais des Congrès, Paris, France.
Minute 2. Record of attendance.
The members present were N. A. Logan (Chairman and acting Secretary), Hans-Jürgen Busse, Anne-Britt Kolstø and Mirja S. Salkinoja-Salonen. Apologies for absence were received from Alistair H. Bishop, Paul De Vos, Dagmar Fritze, Marc Heyndrickx, Peter Kämpfer, Fergus G. Priest, Leon Rabinovitch, Ralph A. Slepecky and Antonio Ventosa. P. De Vos, P. Kämpfer and A. Ventosa apologized in person; they were prevented from attending by their duties at meetings of other taxonomic subcommittees. Also in attendance were Andreas Felske and Dave Pincus.
Minute 3. Minutes of the previous meeting.
The minutes of the meeting that was held on 18 August 1999 in Sydney, Australia, had been circulated by email, approved and published [Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 50 (2000), 1409].
Minute 4. Minimal standards.
The Chairman tabled a paper outlining the slow gestation of minimal standards for the description of new taxa of Bacillus and related organisms and its ultimate miscarriage. He explained why the drafts of minimal standards that members had commented upon over the last few years had not been brought to readiness for publication, and reported that the previous Chairman of the subcommittee had recently passed all minimal standards documents in his possession to himself, the new Chairman, so that a fresh start was now both possible and desirable. There ensued considerable discussion, led by H.-J. Busse, on the urgent need for minimal standards, and the nature of the standards required; he indicated that the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes (ICSP) had recommended the minimal standards prepared for the Flavobacteriaceae [Bernardet et al., Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 52 (2002), 1049–1070] as a good model. The purpose and application of minimal standards was raised, and it was explained by H.-J. Busse that it was the policy of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM) to follow standards where they exist for papers submitted to that journal. Application of these standards to proposals published elsewhere, when compiling validation lists, was not appropriate, and the only control is the Bacteriological Code. It was agreed that minimal standards would address both the genus and species levels for aerobic endospore-forming bacteria. N. A. Logan and H.-J. Busse agreed that they would, with the help of other subcommittee members, generate a key-word list with indications of which characters suggested for inclusion in minimal standards should be regarded as ‘essential’, and which as ‘useful’.
Minute 5. Species concept in the Bacillus cereus group.
A.-B. Kolstø initiated discussion concerning the definition of species within the Bacillus cereus group, and the usefulness of the subspecies concept in that group. She observed that cluster analysis of genome sequence data had placed a cluster containing some B. cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis strains within the Bacillus anthracis cluster, while the type strain of B. cereus lay outside that cluster. The Chairman pointed out that B. anthracis, Bacillus mycoides and B. thuringiensis had been proposed as varieties of B. cereus by Smith et al. in 1952, and Gordon et al. maintained this stance in their 1973 monograph, but that this nomenclature had not been generally accepted by the wider bacteriological community. M. S. Salkinoja-Salonen noted that emetic toxin-producing strains were closely related to B. anthracis and she drew parallels with the relationships of Shigella species and Escherichia coli, and between Yersinia pestis and Yersinia enterocolitica; she commented on the importance of phenotypic markers in such cases. The Chairman raised the question of genus status for the B. cereus group of species, and M. S. Salkinoja-Salonen found the idea of a new genus, ‘Cereobacillus’, attractive. Further discussion centred on whether mobile elements and gains or losses of toxins could be taken into account in delineating species; in conclusion, the importance of using stable characters for species definition was agreed.
Minute 6. Type strain availability.
The Chairman outlined a matter that D. Fritze had drawn to his attention by letter: the fact that there are some type strains of species of aerobic spore-forming bacteria that are covered by patent protection (and are thus not freely available), or that are unavailable for other reasons. It has happened that deposits that are made in connection with the publication of new species turn out to be restricted patent deposits. This raises the following questions. (1) What should be done with a species for which the type strain is not freely available to the scientific community? (2) What measures can be taken so that referees and editors can check on the potential for this problem to arise, and so avoid it?
Examples of this problem were outlined and are given below.
(i) Thermobacillus xylanilyticus [Touzel et al., Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 50 (2000), 315–320], CNCM I-1017 patent strain.
(ii) Paenibacillus granivorans [van der Maarel et al., Syst Appl Microbiol 23 (2000), 344–348], CBS 229.89 patent strain.
(iii) Bacillus thermoamylovorans [Combet-Blanc et al., Int J Syst Bacteriol 45 (1995), 9–16], CNCM I-1378 patent strain.
(iv) Bacillus carboniphilus [Fujita et al., Int J Syst Bacteriol 46 (1996), 116–118], JCM 9731, which is available only upon certain terms, such as declaration vis-à-vis a Japanese company not to pass on the strain to third parties, and to supply all one's results to that company prior to publication, said company then being entitled to use the data itself.
Attempts by D. Fritze to obtain these cultures had failed in all cases. She asked: should not all type strains be available without restrictions? She noted that, although the IJSEM and other journals seem now to be alert to this problem, there remains the difficulty of the existing problematic type strains. It has been suggested previously that one solution could be to remove species status if the type strain is not freely available. She wondered whether the subcommittee should address the problem. The Chairman reported that he had been advised by Brian J. Tyndall, immediately prior to the meeting, that the Judicial Commission on the Nomenclature of Prokaryotes would be addressing the issue, and that discussion at subcommittee level was not necessary.
Minute 7. Meetings.
The Chairman advised that, following the success of the Bacillus 2000 symposium in Bruges, Belgium, 30–31 August 2000, Bacillus 2003 would be held as a 2-day satellite symposium during the 1st FEMS Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 29 June–3 July 2003; A.-B. Kolstø drew the subcommittee's attention to the 5th International Conference on Anthrax, 30 March–3 April 2003, in Nice, and the meeting on Bacillus genetics 26–28 June 2003, in Ravenna.
Minute 8. Work in progress.
Several members and persons attending kindly outlined their current research programmes: A.-B. Kolstø described her work on the relationships of B. anthracis, B. cereus and B. thuringiensis as investigated by analysis of 13 housekeeping enzymes, and observed that two groups of strains had emerged; soil and dairy isolates were found in both groups, but clinical strains were only found in Group II. She noted that B. cereus ATCC 10987 lay close to B. anthracis (a relationship also revealed by a phylogeny based upon 520 putative orthologous genes), while a ‘B. thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki’ strain was very close to the type strain of B. cereus. Analysis using B. anthracis microarrays revealed that all B. thuringiensis strains lay within Group II, and that the B. cereus type strain lay within the B. thuringiensis cluster. She stated that B. cereus ATCC 10987 possesses a plasmid containing many genes, but not the entire pathogenicity island, that are found in the virulence plasmids of B. anthracis. M. S. Salkinoja-Salonen described her recent work on emetic toxin-producing isolates of B. cereus from outbreaks of food-poisoning and from the air of houses where the occupants had problems of long-term ill health. Some strains were found to be lecithinase-negative, all strains were penicillin-sensitive or partially so and non-motile or poorly motile, and all strains had at least three of the four properties: acid from starch negative, acid from salicin negative, negative for tyrosine decomposition (only two strains positive), and non-haemolytic or only slightly haemolytic. Such properties make these B. cereus strains difficult to separate from B. anthracis by phenotypic methods. The 16S rRNA gene sequences of these isolates were identical with each other, and most were identical with the sequence of the Ames strain of B. anthracis; those that were not identical with the Ames strain differed by only one or two nucleotides. The B. cereus isolates were also little different from B. anthracis by ribotyping.
Minute 9. Changes in membership.
Roger C. W. Berkeley has resigned following his retirement, and the members present expressed their gratitude for his work as secretary and then chairman of the subcommittee over many years. Following email consultations, members of the subcommittee had consented to R. C. W. Berkeley's suggestion that N. A. Logan should become chairman. As there had been no nominations for secretary, N. A. Logan combines this duty with the chairmanship. Laurence Nakamura has also resigned following his retirement. As no response to the secretary's letters has been received from I. Epstein, his resignation is assumed. A. H. Bishop (University of Greenwich, UK) and A.-B. Kolstø (University of Oslo, Norway) were invited to join the subcommittee in late 2000.
Minute 10. Suggestions for new members.
The Chairman invited suggestions for a new member, as three members had retired but only two new members had been appointed. The Chairman wondered if a new member with expertise on non-spore-forming relatives within the phylogeny of the aerobic endospore-formers, or one with an interest in thermophiles might be desirable. It was suggested by H.-J. Busse that a new member with an interest in peptidoglycan analysis would be attractive, as this approach to characterization had been ignored too much in the past. Five names were put forward, and as the meeting did not achieve a quorum, it was agreed to circulate the list among subcommittee members for discussion, prior to any election of a new member.
Minute 11. Current membership.
The current membership of the subcommittee is as follows: N. A. Logan (Chairman and acting Secretary), Glasgow, UK; A. H. Bishop, Greenwich, UK; H.-J. Busse, Vienna, Austria; P. De Vos, Gent, Belgium; D. Fritze, Braunschweig, Germany; M. Heyndrickx, Melle, Belgium; P. Kämpfer, Giessen, Germany; A.-B. Kolstø, Oslo, Norway; F. G. Priest, Edinburgh, UK; M. S. Salkinoja-Salonen, Helsinki, Finland; L. Rabinovitch, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; R. A. Slepecky, New York, USA; and A. Ventosa, Seville, Spain.
Minute 12. Next meeting.
The next meeting of the subcommittee will be held during the XIth International Congress of Bacteriology and Applied Microbiology, San Francisco, USA, in July 2005.
Minute 13. Adjournment.
The meeting was adjourned at 16 : 15 on 30 July 2002.
This article has been cited by other articles:
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  L. Albuquerque, I. Tiago, M. Taborda, M. F. Nobre, A. Verissimo, and M. S. da Costa Bacillus isabeliae sp. nov., a halophilic bacterium isolated from a sea salt evaporation pond Int J Syst Evol Microbiol, January 1, 2008; 58(1): 226 - 230. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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