The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) is a committee which authorizes and organizes the taxonomic classification of viruses. They have developed a universal taxonomic scheme for viruses and aim to describe all the viruses of living organisms. Members of the committee are considered to be world experts on viruses. The committee formed from and is governed by the Virology Division of the International Union of Microbiological Societies. Detailed work such as delimiting the boundaries of species within a family is typically done by study groups, which consist of experts in the families.
The committee also operates an authoritative database (ICTVdB) containing taxonomic information for 1,950 virus species, as of 2005. It is open to the public and is searchable by several different means.
Read more about International Committee On Taxonomy Of Viruses: Objectives, Principles of Nomenclature, Naming and Changing Taxa, Rules For Sub-viral Agents, Rules For Orthography, ICTVdb Database
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