LTP stands for “The All-Species Living Tree» Project that was initiated in 2007 as a joint effort between the Marine Microbiology Group at the IMEDEA, the Molecular Ecology Group at the MPI, the Department of Microbiology of the TUM and with the especial support of Elsevier, publisher of the journal Systematic and Applied Microbiology. The aim of the project was to generate a highly curated database of all available 16S rRNA gene sequences of type strains of Bacteria and Archaea, as well as to reconstruct the most robust phylogenies using the universal alignment implemented in ARB. Along the almost 15 years collaboration, the LTP has been regularly updated to offer the best tool for genealogical reconstructions for taxonomic purposes.

The current release LTP_2020 (Ludwig et al., 2021) introduces important changes over the former as a large set of sequences had been substituted, the universal alignment has been thoroughly improved to accommodate the new sequences that contain insertions, as well to improve the helix structures, and has increased from 42,283 to 98,863 homologous positions. We also provide the most robust phylogenetic tree currently achievable with the available dataset.

Our aim is to regularly improve and update the database. Therefore, the team will acknowledge the help of users notifying some mistakes or gaps that they may find.

To get updated on the news or changes in the LTP release, please add your email here and will be added to the LTP distribution list. In addition, if you want to contact the members of the team, just send us an email to: ltp@imedea.uib-csic.es