Title: The Yeasts, a new online and updatable platform for yeast diversity

Objectives: Yeast diversity is rapidly expanding due to discovery of new species and new insight in their phylogenetic relationships. This also relates to emerging yeasts that are clinically relevant. The Yeasts aims to present information on all yeast species in an updatable and on-line, open access electronic format   
Methods: Information on yeast strains from publicly available culture collections and other sources, and will be made available in a species-based electronic information platform providing clinically relevant data that will be useful for consulting clinicians and all others working in diagnostic laboratories.  
Results: Publicly available information on yeast strains from public culture collections will be clustered according to species boundaries. This species-specific information will be the base of species descriptions that will also include information on clinically important subjects, such as clinical occurrence and susceptibility to the most commonly bused antifungals. The platform will be updatable, community-based and freely available. Libraries of molecular barcodes, nutritional growth data, and maldi-spectra may be useful for identification of unknown yeast isolates. Besides, protocols for the isolation and identification of yeast isolates will be provided.  
Conclusions: The Yeasts will provide a highly useful resource for clinicians and laboratory personnel dealing with the identification of clinically obtained yeast isolates. The system will be open access and updatable, and, hence, be up to date as good as is possible.