International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes: Subcommittee on the taxonomy of Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus and related organisms * Minutes of the meetings, 1 September 2014, Nantes, France

Research reports on topics related to the taxonomy of Lactobacillus and related organisms and bifidobacteria were presented within the workshop ‘Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium taxonomy: a navigator in bacterial diversity and applications’. The workshop took place with the support of the Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM). The invited speaker, Paul Lawson, presented a key lecture entitled ‘Microbial Genomic Taxonomy: A Look to the Future’. Other presentations were: ‘Definition of minimal standards for the accurate taxonomic description and identification of species belonging to Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus and related genera’ (Paola Mattarelli, Italy); ‘Diversity of Lactobacillus delbrueckii and Bifidobacterium longum revealed by multilocus approaches and amplified fragment length polymorphism’ (Koichi Watanabe, Japan); ‘The European culture collections join the Microbial Resources Research Infrastructure (MIRRI) project: road map for improving access to the microbial resources’ (Raquel Hurtado-Ortiz, France). The attendance of the of the meeting was numerous. A brief discussion followed each presentation.