IMA FUNGUS · VOLUME 4 · no 2: 371–379 doi:10.5598/imafungus.2013.04.02.16 MycoBank gearing up for new horizons ARTICLE Vincent Robert1, Duong Vu1, Ammar Ben Hadj Amor1, Nathalie van de Wiele1, Carlo Brouwer1, Bernard Jabas1, Szaniszlo Szoke1, Ahmed Dridi1, Maher Triki1, Samy ben Daoud1, Oussema Chouchen1, Lea Vaas1, Arthur de Cock1, Joost A. Stalpers1, Dora Stalpers1, Gerard J.M. Verkley1, Marizeth Groenewald1, Felipe Borges dos Santos1, Gerrit Stegehuis1, Wei Li2, Linhuan Wu2, Run Zhang2, Juncai Ma2, Miaomiao Zhou1, Sergio Pérez Gorjón3, Lily Eurwilaichitr4, Supawadee Ingsriswang4, Karen Hansen5, Conrad Schoch6, Barbara Robbertse6, Laszlo Irinyi7, Wieland Meyer7, Gianluigi Cardinali8, David L. Hawksworth9, John W. Taylor10, and Pedro W. Crous 1CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Center, Uppsalalaan 8, 3584CT Utrecht, The Netherlands; corresponding author e-mail: [email protected] 2Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, NO.1 West Beichen Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, P. R. China 3Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, 37007, Salamanca, Spain 4National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC), 113 Thailand Science Park, Phaholyothin Road, Klong 1, Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand 5Department of Cryptogamic Botany, Swedish Museum of Natural History (S), P.O. Box 50007, Svante Arrhenius väg 7, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden 6Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA 7Research Laboratory, Center for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, Sydney Medical School-Westmead Hospital, The University of Sydney, Westmead Millennium Institute and Westmead Hospital, Sydney, Australia 8Dip. Biologia Applicata, University of Perugia, Borgo 20 Giugno 74, I 06121, Perugia, Italy 9Departamento de Biología Vegetal II, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Plaza Ramón y Cajal, Madrid 28040, Spain; Department of Life Sciences, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK; and Mycology Section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Surrey TW9 3DS, UK 10Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Abstract: MycoBank, a registration system for fungi established in 2004 to capture all taxonomic Key words: novelties, acts as a coordination hub between repositories such as Index Fungorum and Fungal MycoBank Names. Since January 2013, registration of fungal names is a mandatory requirement for valid EUBOLD identification services publication under the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (ICN). This Forum review explains the database innovations that have been implemented over the past few years, and Fungi discusses new features such as advanced queries, registration of typification events (MBT numbers International Nucleotide Sequence for lecto, epi- and neotypes), the multi-lingual database interface, the nomenclature discussion forum, Database Collaboration annotation system, and web services with links to third parties. MycoBank has also introduced novel Next Generation Sequencing identification services, linking DNA sequence data to numerous related databases to enable intelligent Nomenclature search queries. Although MycoBank fills an important void for taxon registration, challenges for the Registration future remain to improve links between taxonomic names and DNA data, and to also introduce a Repositories formal system for naming fungi known from DNA sequence data only. To further improve the quality Typification of MycoBank data, remote access will now allow registered mycologists to act as MycoBank curators, using Citrix software. Article info: Submitted: 7 December 2013; Accepted: 10 December 2013; Published: 17 December 2013. INTRODUCTION because they were published in obscure sources. Due to the large number of names published each year in a range MycoBank was officially launched in 2004 as an online of publications, MycoBank curators were not always able to repository with the primary aim to register all fungal verify and include all of them in the database. To address taxonomic novelties published (including new names and this issue, we approached a large number of journal editors combinations), and make this available in an open access that published taxonomic novelties, and suggested that they database to the mycological community (Crous et al. 2004). request authors deposit nomenclatural data, descriptions and One of the major constraints experienced by mycologists was illustrations in MycoBank, as good practice. This equates that many newly published fungal names were not accessible MycoBank as a phenotypic equivalent of GenBank, the main to researchers in developing countries or simply overlooked, database for genotypic data. Authors would receive a unique © 2013 International Mycological Association You are free to share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work, under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non-commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No derivative works: You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work, which can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights. VOLUME 4 · NO. 2 371 Robert et al. identifier to link the registration to the name (equivalent to a (software, databases and website) has been transferred GenBank accession number for data sequence), and would to a professional datacentre where power supply, Internet simultaneously be assured that no homonyms were published, connections and backups are guaranteed. as the search engine would inform authors if the name In order to keep MycoBank users aware of the latest news was already occupied (www.mycobank.org). Registration and improvements related to the database and software, a ARTICLE was seen as a two-step process; upon acceptance of the “News” section was created that can be accessed at www. article, authors deposit their taxonomic novelties, provide mycobank.org/BioloMICSNews.aspx. the MB numbers in the protolog, and upon publication, Since the MycoBank website offers a large number of notify MycoBank to ensure that the taxonomic novelty could features, a “Frequently Asked Questions” and a ”Help” section be released to the community with date, volume and page are now available, providing a number of answers and videos numbers. associated with commonly asked questions (these features So popular was the system with mycologists, that are available under the Help button on the main menu). proposals to make the deposit of the key elements mandatory for the valid publication of new scientific names of fungi, at all Queries ranks, were prepared (Hawksworth et al. 2010), and debated The new software interface was created in order to improve at the 9th International Mycological Congress in Edinburgh flexibility for queries. Basic (www.mycobank.org/Biolomics. in 2010. These were put before the Nomenclature Section aspx?Table=Mycobank) and advanced queries (www. of the 18th International Botanical Congress in Melbourne mycobank.org/Biolomics.aspx?Table=Mycobank_Advanced) in July 2011, and incorporated into the International Code are now possible. Advanced users can build complex Boolean of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (McNeill et al. queries by combining AND, OR and NOT together with 2012). MycoBank can do much more than complete the basic brackets. This makes it possible to ask a question such as requirements of the Code, but the only mandatory elements “find all Candida species published after 1990 by Kurtzman are the: name; rank; authorship; bibliographic details of the and not by Fell”. This query will look like this: (Taxon contains anticipated place of publication; diagnosis (or description) for Candida) AND (Publication date is after 1990) AND (Authors names of novel taxa (which from 1 January 2012 can be in contains Kurtzman) AND NOT (Authors contains Fell). English or Latin); full bibliographic details of the basionym or Results of queries are displayed as lists that can be exported replaced name for new combinations, names at new ranks, to MS-Excel sheets or MS-Word documents. or replacement names; and for names of novel taxa also In addition to the main taxonomic database, we have details of the name-bearing type and the institution or other also added a bibliographic query system (www.mycobank. place in which it is permanently preserved. org/Biolomics.aspx?Table=Mycobank%20literature) as well Although MycoBank was initially set up by CBS- as a thesaurus of terms commonly used in mycology (www. KNAW staff in close collaboration with Index Fungorum, in mycobank.org/Biolomics.aspx?Table=Thesaurus). 2009 it was decided that the ownership of the MycoBank system, database and website should be transferred to the Name registration International Mycological Association (IMA). In 2010 a new The interface for the registration of the scientific names of version of the MycoBank website was launched, based on new taxa, and new names, has also been redesigned and the BioloMICS software