Bergeys Manual Trust What is Bergeys Manual Trust

Bergey’s Manual Trust • What is Bergey’s Manual Trust? – Non-profit, private organization – Produces updated classification and descriptive information of bacterial and archaeal species – Volunteers – members, associates and authors – BMT Editorial Office is at Department of Microbiology, University of Georgia

Goals of Bergey’s Manual Trust • Provide up-to-date description of all Bacteria and Archaea • Provide unofficial classification of Bacteria and Archaea using phylogeny based on 16 S r. DNA sequences • Provide inexpensive resource on bacterial taxa for science community • Promote taxonomy of Bacteria and Archaea through publications and scientific meetings

History of Bergey’s Manual Trust • Formed in 1936 as a unique American science organization which soon developed to an international level • Founding Trustees - David Henricks Bergey, Robert Stanley Breed and Everitt G. D. Murray • Outgrowth of Society for Bacteriology (now the American Society for Microbiology) • Contracted with Williams and Wilkins to publish Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology of which 9 editions have been published • Supported by royalties from publications

Current Trustees • • • M. Goodfellow – Chair – United Kingdom P. Kaempfer – Vice Chair – Germany W. Whitman – Treasurer – USA F. Rainey – Secretary – USA P. De Vos – Belgium J. Chun - Korea

Current Publications • Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, 9 th edition – 1994, still available and selling • Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology, 2 nd edition – 5 volumes – Volumes 1, 2 and 3 have been published, Volume 4 is in press and Volume 5 is near completion – All 5 volumes should be in print by end of 2010 – Current publisher: Springer

Authors and Audience • Approximately 600 international authors for the 2 nd edition of Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology – experts in a particular taxonomic group • Global audience of microbiologists and other professionals (e. g. , biodiversity community, animal and human health community, undergraduate and graduate students)

Other Activities of Bergey’s Manual Trust • Provide a Taxonomic Outline of the Bacteria and Archaea • Bergey Award – Recognizes young to middle-aged scientists who have and continue to make significant contributions to bacterial taxonomy • Bergey Medal – Recognizes senior scientists who have made life-long contributions to the field of systematic bacteriology. • Promotes the field of bacterial taxonomy – Sponsoring sessions at microbiological conferences • ISBA-14 in Newcastle UK -2007 • IUMS conference in Istanbul -2009 • FEMS conference in Gothenburg -2009

Volume 3 - 2009 Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology Volume 3: The Firmicutes Includes a revised taxonomic outline for the Firmicutes based upon the SILVA project as well as a description of more than 1346 species and 240 genera belonging to the phylum Firmicutes, which are also called the low mol% G+C Gram positive prokaryotes. Major taxa to be included are: Alicyclobacillus, Bacillus, Clostridium, Enterococcus, Erysipelothrix, Eubacterium, Haloanaerobium, Heliobacterium, Lachnospira, Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc, Listeria, Paenibacillus, Peptococcus, Ruminococcus, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Syntrophomonas, Thermoactinomyces, Thermoanaerobacter, Veillonella and additional genera. Includes many medically and industrially important taxa. .

Looking inside a volume • Taxonomic outline • Descriptions of taxa at all levels: – Upper level taxa: phyla, classes, orders, families – Lower level taxa: genera, species, subspecies • Taking Volume 3 as an example: total of 1450 pages – – – • Phyla – 1 Classes – 3 Orders – 6 Families – 44 Genera – 240 Species – 1346 Example chapter – the genus Caldicellulosirupter

Moving from paper to digital • Considerations: – Amount of material and information • Vols 1, 2 (B, C) and 3 comprise 4667 pages • 1269 genera and >8, 000 species Vols 1 -5 • Each species between 100 – 200 characters – Moving target • New taxa published each month in IJSEM • Current number of genera not included in Vols 1 -5 = ~580 – What does the user need?

The way forward……. • Some options: – With what we have right now: • Web access to PDFs of individual chapters • Web page version – searchable and fully linked – New products: • Wiki type format – easily updated by specific authors • The information in a web database • Issues: – Who actually owns these data? Bergey’s has copyright on printed books but the data all comes from primary literature – How to fund the updating and curation of these data – How often should the data be updated?