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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC AND EVOLUTIONARY MICROBIOLOGY logo

Volume 71, Issue 11

Out with the old and in with the new: time to rethink twentieth century chemotaxonomic practices in bacterial taxonomy Open Access

Abstract

Chemotaxonomic methods played an important role in the development of the polyphasic approach to classification of and . However, we here argue that routine application of these methods is unnecessary in an era when genomic data are available and sufficient for species delineation. Thus, authors who choose not to utilize such methods should not be forced to do so during the peer review and editorial handling of manuscripts describing novel species. Instead, we argue that chemotaxonomy will thrive if improved analytical methods are introduced and deployed, primarily by specialist laboratories, in studies at taxonomic levels above the characterisation of novel species.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): bacterial taxonomy , chemotaxonomy , genome sequence and polyphasic taxonomy
© 2021 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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2021-11-30
2024-05-11
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