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 16S rDNA 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, 9th edition – 1994, still available and selling Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology, 2nd 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 2nd 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 IUMS conference in Istanbul FEMS conference in Gothenburg -2009

Volume 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 CaldicellulosirupterCaldicellulosirupter

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?