SeqCode, ICNP, and the biological diversity act of India: Reconciling global nomenclature frameworks with national sovereignty in microbial taxonomy

Abstract

Rule 30 of the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICNP) requires deposition of type strains in two publicly accessible culture collections in different countries as a condition of valid publication of the name, a requirement that structurally conflicts with access and benefit-sharing (ABS) legislation in biodiversity-rich nations. India's Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (amended 2023) exemplifies this conflict: researchers seeking to export isolates to satisfy Rule 30 must obtain National Biodiversity Authority approval, which routinely imposes use restrictions incompatible with the Code's unrestricted-access requirement. This review examines three pathways now available to researchers facing this constraint, traditional ICNP valid publication, the newly regulated Candidatus pro-status system under ICNP Section 10 (effective 2025), and the independent genome-based SeqCode, and evaluates their relative suitability for Indian microbial taxonomy. We find that while the policy-level mechanism connecting biodiversity law to nomenclatural non-compliance is well documented, case-level attribution for specific published Indian taxa remains largely unverified in the public record, a gap we identify and propose steps to close. We conclude with pathway-specific implementation recommendations for Indian repositories, researchers, and policy bodies, and note that the dual-code editorial policy of Systematic and Applied Microbiology, and a few other journals offers a comparatively low-friction venue for taxa affected by this conflict.