Virus Taxonomy: VIIIth Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses

Claude Fauquet is a renowned plant virologist that has now embarked on plant biotechnology for the last 10 years. Dr. Fauquet has extensive experience in field virology and epidemiology, but also in molecular and experimental virology. He is mostly interested in tropical plant viruses and particularly in geminiviruses that are devastating tropical crops. In 1991, he became Director of ILTAB (International Laboratory for Agricultural Biotechnology), a joint French-American project aiming at transferring plant biotechnologies to less developing countries.

Jack Maniloff is Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester. His research has elucidated the ultrastructure and molecular biology of mycoplasma cells and viruses. The latter studies were the beginning of mycoplasma virology and included description of several new virus taxa, first demonstration of restriction and modification in mycoplasmas, and development of the first method for genetic transfer in mycoplasmas. More recent studies have focused on the phylogeny of mycoplasma cells and viruses and chronology of the origin and evolution of microorganisms and their hosts. His awards include a USPHS-NIH Research Career Development Award, a Fogarty Senior International Fellowship, and the 2000 University of Heidelberg Lectureship in Molecular Mycoplasmology. Prof. Maniloff joined the ICTV as elected member in 1990, then as subcommittee chair in 1993 for the Porkaryote viruses and he became Vice-President of ICTV in 1999.

Ulrich Desselberger MD FRCPath FRCP (Glasgow, London), Research Assistant and Consultant, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany, 1968-1976 (apl. Professor for Medical Microbiology, Hannover, Medical School, 1983); Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Assistant Professor, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, 1977-1979; Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Virologist, University of Glasgow, Scotland UK, 1980-1987; Consultant Virologist and Director, Regional Virus Laboratory, Birmingham UK, 1988-1990; Consultant Virologist and Director, Clinical Microbiology and Public Health Laboratory, Cambridge UK, 1991-2002 (Clinical Director of Pathology, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, 1998-2002); Senior Research Fellow, CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, 2002-present. Main scientific interests: genome analysis of RNA viruses (influenzaviruses, rotaviruses, retroviruses a.o.), rotavirus replication, viral determinants of pathogenicity, molecular techniques of viral diagnosis, molecular epidemiology.

Dr. L. Andrew Ball received a D. Phil. in biochemistry from Oxford University in 1969. He first discovered the attractions of viruses as experimental systems while studying the replication of RNA phage when he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Since then he has held academic positions at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, UK; the University of Connecticut–Storrs; the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In his research he has used viruses in the families Rhabdoviridae, Paramyxoviridae, Poxviridae, Nodaviridae, and Tetraviridae to study transcription, replication, and recombination of viral DNA and RNA, as well as the control of gene expression by the cellular mechanisms of innate immunity. He served as chair of the ICTV nodavirus/tetravirus Study Group for six years and as chair of the Invertebrate virus subcommittee before being elected ICTV President in 2002.