Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Classification of Viruses-Introduction
To understand more about viruses, we must firstly learn about the classification systems for viruses.
Unlike most living things on Earth, viruses are acellular and need to invade hosts to replicate and survive. Therefore they do not fall under the common classification method used for other living things [mainly the system invented by Carolus Linnaeus (the father of taxonomy)-- the popular system of classifying by Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species],by the various methods invented and elaborated here.
Viral classification methods include:
- Lwoff's Scheme: A scheme devised by Lwoff, RW Horne and P Tournier in 1962 that uses physical properties of virus for classification
- Baltimore's System: Developed by David Baltimore in 1971, and based on viral genome and relaionship to mRNA
- ICTV (International Commitee on Taxonomy of Viruses) classification: Naming based on order, family, genus and type species
Important contributions to this area:
- First attempt to develop system to classify viruses in 1966 by the International Congress of Microbiology, Moscow
- ICTV first report in 1971
- Lwoff's Scheme in 1962
- Baltimore's System
More details on Lwoff's Scheme will be in the next post.
Blogged @ 11:09 PM