It turns out mushroom researchers have a sense of humour and have named a new species of mushroom Spongiforma squarepantsii after the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants.
If only bacterial taxonomy was simple enough to use such familiar names, but with thousands of species, subspecies, serotypes, phage types a far more structured approach is needed.
In 1735, when Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of the Systema Naturae there were only around 10,000 recognised species of living things, and this didn’t include any bacteria. I don’t think he could have envisaged there’d be more than 2,500 different strains of salmonella alone.
Naming salmonella has now become so complicated it has its own classification system – the Kauffman and White classification scheme. Originally salmonella species were named after their hosts, but when it was found not all species were host-specific they started to be named after the places they were isolated. Some are more well known than others – for example Salmonella Dublin, Salmonella Bareilly and Salmonella Montevideo. Whereas E.coli has a more structured, but I have to say less interesting, naming convention based on their various O and H antigens, for example E. coli O157:H7 or E. coli O104:H4.
These detailed classification systems are essential when investigating outbreaks of foodborne disease, and adding further levels of detail through phage typing and genetic typing gives more resolution and improves scientists’ ability to investigate outbreaks – as we’ve seen with the recent E.coli outbreak in Germany. I know experts at the HPA and in other reference labs will be working around the clock to decipher as much information as they can from the evidence and I’d like to encourage them on their efforts.
