Donald Seto¹*, James Chodosh², J. Rodney Brister³, Morris S. Jones⁴ and members of the Adenovirus Research Community⁵

^{JVI Accepts, published online ahead of print on 30 March 2011}

^{J. Virol. doi:10.1128/JVI.00354-11}

1.   “Type” will succeed “serotype”, thus reflecting the prevalence of genome sequence data usage; it is also already in usage as per the ICTV definitions.

2.   Previously named HAdVs transition to the new format; e.g., “serotype HAdV-C1” will become “type HAdV-C1”, where the letter C indicates the adenovirus species (currently species A-G). Each adenovirus type will have a unique, consecutively assigned number, i.e., there will not be an HAdV-D54 and an HAdV-C54.

3.   Acceptance of a new type will require analysis of the complete genome sequence, including phylogenomics.

4.   Serum neutralization will continue to be used as an additional criterion, per the ICTV definition.  This should be by actual serum neutralization and hemagglutination inhibition, rather than imputed derivation by limited DNA sequencing of the epitopes.

5.   Naming priority will follow the order in which accessions are released in the public sequence databases. Adherence to the Bermuda principles will be encouraged, whereby sequences are released as soon as possible (see http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/publicat/hgn/v7n6/19intern.shtml).

6.   Recombination is an accepted feature of HAdV evolution and will be accommodated. Recombinants will be classified as novel types if there are sufficient genomic, biological or pathogenic differences from related types. Until peer-reviewed publication, a provisional standardized name will be used that reflects critical serological markers and similarities to established types in species, penton base and serology-based motifs in hexon and fiber, plus the year and place of isolation. Thus, the provisional name for HAdV-D53 was HAdV-D /Hannover/“unique identifier”/2005/P37/H22/F8.  For reference, “P” refers to the penton base, “H” refers to the hexon loop 1 region and “F” refers to the fiber knob; numbers refer to established type with the highest nucleotide identity, in the respective regions.  The “unique identifier” is a “lab designation” or “strain name”, e.g., “2005-IAI-1” for HAdV-D53 isolate 1 and “2005-IAI-2” for HAdV-D53 isolate 2, should both genomes be deposited in GenBank.