TAXON-OMICS: for a renaissance of taxonomy as a fundamental resource towards biodiversity-based innovation in industrial biotechnology.

The major part of the biodiversity of our planet is constituted by prokaryote microorganims, which play a pivotal role in the biochemical processes of the biosphere, and find application in a broad array of industrial and biotechnological applications. Prospecting of valuable natural diversity has greatly intensified over the last decades, in the search for new industrial strains and catalysts. Novel sources of microbial diversity are currently being explored thanks to improved cultivation techniques and (meta)genomic tools, therefore an immense variety of novel organisms is being discovered and even more is yet to come. For a comprehensive knowledge and a successful exploitation, the biodiversity of microorganisms has to be carefully catalogued. This brings urgently back on stage the old discipline of taxonomy: classification, identification and nomenclature are often underestimated tasks, while the correct assignment and use of specimen names is crucial for exchange of information in science, besides which, it is a key feature for laws and regulations in biotechnology and biosafety (e.g., GRAS, QPS, and risk groups of organisms are in fact lists of names). Also, many scientific advances influence the development of taxonomic schemes and nomenclature, and the impact of the growing omic disciplines is still poorly evaluated. The present report aims at (i) giving an overview of the central role of taxonomy in industrial biotechnology, as a standard of presentation of all data related to microbial diversity, (ii) demonstrating that the framework provided by taxonomy is evolving thanks to omic techniques; (iii) showing that taxonomic background is necessary to design robust and reliable diagnostic tools. Therefore a close synergy between taxonomists and other microbiologists is envisaged to provide the scientific community with ultimate reliable tools of classification for research and application of microbial agents in the international year of biodiversity 2010