What can genome analysis offer for bacteria?

This book chapter is organized as follows: (i) the main approaches to the philosophy of taxonomic classification are recapitulated; (ii) the paradigm of polyphasic taxonomy is discussed in this context; (iii) the causes of conflict between previous classifications and genome-scale analyses are investigated, using examples from recent phylum-wide studies, with a discussion of how markers used in polyphasic taxonomy can be replaced by genome-derived ones; and (iv) the challenges in assigning taxonomic ranks using genome-scale or other data are revisited. The conclusion assesses the chances, or lack thereof, of reconciling taxonomic classifications. Phenetic and phylogenetic thinking still compete with each other on the classification of bacteria, with potentially conflicting and confusing results. Some causes of problematic taxonomic classifications are independent of the type and number of characters that can be used and can only be mitigated if, for example, taxon sampling and branch support are more appropriately taken into account. It may be possible to devise objective criteria for separating bacterial species, but the currently dominating approaches for microbial species delineation may be inadequate. It is even harder to delineate higher taxa; in contrast to claims in the literature, it may prove to be impossible to objectively assign taxonomic ranks above species level.