NCBI Taxonomy Updates to Virus Classification

Starting April 28, 2025

In December 2024, we announced several key changes to virus classification in the NCBI Taxonomy database. These updates are part of our ongoing efforts to ensure viral taxonomy reflects the latest scientific understanding and aligns with international standards set by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). We will begin implementing these updates the week of April 28, 2025. 

What to expect from these updates 

• Improvements in taxonomic groupings and names: Some taxa will be renamed, reclassified, or reorganized based on evolving research and genomic data.  
• Addition of new binomial species names: We will add more than 7,000 new binomial virus species names. The former species names will be moved below the new names in the taxonomy hierarchy.  

Former ICTV nomenclature

New in spring 2025 

Why are these changes important? 

Accurate and up-to-date virus taxonomy is critical for many types of research, from tracking viral outbreaks to ensuring adequate safety regulations are in place. By aligning our taxonomy database with the latest ICTV standards, we make it easier for scientists to: 

• Analyze viral sequences with greater precision 
• Identify relationships between viral species more accurately 
• Improve the consistency of taxonomic assignments across datasets, facilitating data sharing and analysis across the global scientific community 

What this means for you 

Effective the week starting April 28, you may notice changes to virus lineages across NCBI resources, however GenBank records will remain assigned to the same organism they are currently assigned to. As part of the update, we will also modify virus RefSeqs to reflect the revised taxonomy – including creating new RefSeqs, updates to the assigned organism and titles on records, and updating gene and metadata annotation.

These changes are especially relevant to virology researchers using NCBI Virus, RefSeq, NCBI Datasets, or GenBank for submissions and analyses. In particular, those using the NCBI Datasets command-line tool should update it to the latest version (v18.1 or above) to avoid any retrieval issues. We recommend reviewing your workflows, particularly those involving sequence submissions and retrieval, classification tools, or phylogenetic analyses, to ensure they accommodate the updated virus classifications. For more detail and tutorials on how to transition to the new nomenclature, please keep an eye on the NCBI Virus help documentation. Our goal is to make these transitions as smooth as possible for the scientific community and we will create and publish documentation as we progress through the transition. 

You can use the ICTV’s “Find the Species” tool, reach out to us through the NCBI Help Desk, or submit a question through the yellow “Feedback” button on NCBI webpages for assistance finding the taxonomic name and lineage of a virus.  

Reminder 

NCBI Taxonomy recently made rank changes to the top node for Viruses (taxid 10239). The taxid will remain the same, but the unique rank is changed to “acellular root” from “superkingdom.”  Correspondingly, the unique rank for cellular organisms (taxid 131567) is changed to “cellular root” from “no rank.” 

Stay up to date  

Connect with NLM on social media to keep up to date with NCBI Taxonomy and other NCBI news.  

Questions?  

Please reach out to us if you have questions or would like to provide feedback.