What's in a name? Would a Wolbachia by any other name, block RNA viruses as sweetly?
I've ranted about bacterial nomenclature in the past (see h ere ), but this post is specifically about Wolbachia pipientis, and how we should name strain-level variants within a particular host-associated clade (such as w Mel, for example). Currently, there seem to be multiple ways to write these names and to present them in databases or the literature. For example: For variants within w Mel, we find examples of the following types of strain names: w MelPop-<insert specific substrain here after the dash> The stuff that comes after the strain name ( w MelPop) sometimes refers to the host insect from which the strain was isolated, or where it currently resides (such as in w MelPop-PYGP) or sometimes refers to how the strain was altered, through sequential passage (such as in w MelPop-CLA). This variability in the naming schemas used in Wolbachia could lead to confusion down the road. We are currently adding strain level information to some of the stocks th...