2010 MeSH® Category B Restructuring
|
Other pertinent articles: MEDLINE/PubMed Year-End Processing Activities 2010 MeSH Now Available 2010 MeSH Files Available for Download Cataloging News 2010 MEDLINE Data Changes — 2010 PubMed Notes — 2010 Newly Maintained MEDLINE for 2010 MeSH Now Available in PubMed What's New for 2010 MeSH  2010 MeSH Category B Restructuring |
B
ackground
Due to in-house system constraints and an entrenched classical view of organism taxonomy, MeSH has been gradually converting from the traditional five-kingdom paradigm to the modern three-domain classification of life. With the creation of the descriptor Eukaryota and its associated children in 2010, NLM® completes this conversion.
In 2009 the top level of the Category B Organisms tree looked like this:
- B1 Animals
- B2 Algae
- B3 Bacteria
- B4 Viruses
- B5 Fungi
- B6 Plants
- B7 Archaea
- B8 Mesomycetozoea
The new hierarchy for 2010 now looks like this: Animals, Algae, Fungi, Plants, and Mesomycetozoea are now all treed under Eukaryota.
- B1 Eukaryota
- Algae
- Alveolata*
- Amoebozoa*
- Animals
- Choanoflagellata*
- Diplomonadida
- Euglenozoa*
- Fungi
- Mesomycetozoea
- Oxymonadida*
- Parabasalidea*
- Plants
- Retortamonadidae
- Rhizaria*
- B2 Archaea
- B3 Bacteria
- B4 Viruses
- B5 Organism Forms
- [* new heading]
Protozoa Reclassification
Protozoa was a descriptor from 1963-2009. It described a group of unicellular organisms in the old five-kingdom paradigm. Classification of Protozoa emphasized modes of nutrition and locomotion, but today, organism classification is based on genetics, ultrastructure, and biochemistry. Consequently, what was once considered Protozoa are now viewed as a group of unrelated Eukaryotes and that concept is no longer considered useful taxonomically. So the descriptor Protozoa has been deleted from MeSH and its children are now treed under new descriptors that are part of Eukaryota.
Furthermore, under the old five-kingdom paradigm, Protozoa were considered animals and were treed under Animals in MeSH. This is no longer the prevalent view, so the check tag Animals will no longer be used with these organisms.
For now, MeSH has retained descriptors containing the word "Protozoan" such as Protozoan Infections, Protozoan Proteins, etc., since common usage of the adjectival form still exists in the literature though it is diminishing.
For additional information on MeSH developments and changes for 2010 see What's New for 2010 MeSH® .
Savage A. 2010 MeSH® Category B Restructuring. NLM Tech Bull. 2009 Nov-Dec;(371):e16.
