The Next Million Names for Archaea and Bacteria

Area of Science:

• Microbiology
• Bioinformatics
• Taxonomy

Background:

• The Linnaean system of binomial nomenclature, established in the 18th century, provides a stable naming convention for biological organisms.
• Exploration of the microbial world, particularly in genomics and metagenomics, necessitates a vast number of new names for Archaea and Bacteria.
• Manual creation of microbial names is time-consuming, slow, and relies heavily on expert review.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an automated, efficient, and linguistically sound method for generating new microbial names.
• To ensure the continued applicability of binomial nomenclature in the era of microbial genomics.
• To address the urgent need for a large supply of novel names for Archaea and Bacteria.

Main Methods:

• An automated approach utilizing combinatorial concatenation of Latin and Greek roots was employed.
• The method generates linguistically correct binomial names for microbial genera and species.
• A proof-of-principle was demonstrated by generating over a million new names.

Main Results:

• Over one million new, linguistically correct names for Bacteria and Archaea were generated.
• The automated approach proved effective in creating a substantial number of novel microbial names.
• The generated names are ready for immediate use in scientific contexts.

Conclusions:

• The proposed automated method offers a sustainable solution for microbial nomenclature.
• This approach provides a roadmap for generating new microbial names for decades to come.
• The legacy of Linnaean nomenclature can be extended into the age of microbial genomics through automation.