In order to reflect changes to the International Code of Virus Classification and Nomenclature (ICVCN) made by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), NCBI will introduce new binomial influenza species names like ‘Alphainfluenzavirus influenzae.’ Changes are expected to be in place near summer 2023.

We recognize that the traditional influenza virus names like ‘Influenza A virus’ and ‘Influenza B virus’ are broadly used in public health, educational institutions, and research. To minimize the impact of this change to those who use NCBI resources, the taxonomy schema will keep the former names in the lineages for each species; however, they will be moved below the (new) species taxa in the hierarchy. See example below.

Former lineages

New lineages

Please note: Taxonomy Identifiers (TaxIds) remain the same and will continue to refer to the below-species names. For example, TaxId 11320 will still refer to influenza A virus. Also, the widely known virus names will still be displayed prominently on Entrez (GenBank) records and BLAST results. These are some considerations customers should keep in mind when submitting or accessing influenza data at NCBI:

• Searches based explicitly on the taxonomy rank ‘species’ will no longer return only records classified to the virus name, e.g. ‘influenza A virus,’ since it is being moved below the rank of ‘species’. Instead, all records associated with the new species names, such as Alphainfluenzavirus influenzae or its TaxId (TaxId 2955291), will be returned.
• Searches using the virus name below the species level (e.g., influenza A virus) or its TaxId (e.g., TaxId 11320), will not include records directly classified to the parent species (e.g. Alphainfluenzavirus influenzae) in the results. However, searches using the parent species will include records assigned to a name below the species in the results unless you include parameters that strictly limit results to the species level. If you want to continue to search and download all flu sequences of a given species, update your queries accordingly.
• The submission process for influenza viruses will remain the same for most users. For influenza A, B, and C, continue submitting data through the Submission Portal. Sequences will be placed into the appropriate group below the species (e.g., placed into “influenza A virus”), which is the same taxonomy level where most of the records will be found after the taxonomy changes are in place.

As new binomial species names are introduced for other viruses by ICTV in the future, we will assess the changes and continue striving to match official taxonomy.  Feel free to email us with any questions or concerns regarding this blog post or NCBI taxonomy more generally.

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