Virxicon: a lexicon of viral sequences

• Published in: Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) Vol. 36; no. 22-23; pp. 5507 - 5513
• Main Authors: Kudla, Mateusz, Gutowska, Kaja, Synak, Jaroslaw, Weber, Mirko, Bohnsack, Katrin Sophie, Lukasiak, Piotr, Villmann, Thomas, Blazewicz, Jacek, Szachniuk, Marta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Oxford University Press 01-04-2021; Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• Subjects: Biological effects; Data acquisition; DNA viruses; Gene sequencing; Genetic diversity; Language; Nucleotide sequence; Original Papers; RNA viruses; Taxonomy; Viruses
• ISSN: 1367-4803; 1367-4811
• DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa1066

Abstract
Motivation
Viruses are the most abundant biological entities and constitute a large reservoir of genetic diversity. In recent years, knowledge about them has increased significantly as a result of dynamic development in life sciences and rapid technological progress. This knowledge is scattered across various data repositories, making a comprehensive analysis of viral data difficult.
Results
In response to the need for gathering a comprehensive knowledge of viruses and viral sequences, we developed Virxicon, a lexicon of all experimentally acquired sequences for RNA and DNA viruses. The ability to quickly obtain data for entire viral groups, searching sequences by levels of taxonomic hierarchy—according to the Baltimore classification and ICTV taxonomy—and tracking the distribution of viral data and its growth over time are unique features of our database compared to the other tools.
Availabilityand implementation
Virxicon is a publicly available resource, updated weekly. It has an intuitive web interface and can be freely accessed at http://virxicon.cs.put.poznan.pl/.