S60: A perspective on phenotypic testing in microbial taxonomy and species id

Phenotypes provide a very useful way to describe the properties of cells.  Furthermore, they reflect the presence or absence of genes.  Therefore, it is logical that phenotypic testing combined with numerical taxonomy, has been the traditional method underlying microbial cell identification and taxonomy.  However, as with all other approaches, phenotypic testing is not perfect and it needs to be improved.  This talk will present a general overview on this topic, will discuss efforts by me and my colleagues to advance and improve phenotypic testing, and will show examples of how we both construct and utilize taxonomies in an attempt to integrate phenotypic results with those based on molecular approaches.