A Reference Viral Database (RVDB) To Enhance Bioinformatics Analysis of High-Throughput Sequencing for Novel Virus Detection

• DOI: 10.1128/mspheredirect.00069-18
• Publication Date: 2018-03-13T13:04:09Z
• Authors: Norman Goodacre; Aisha Aljanahi; Subhiksha Nandakumar; Mike Mikailov; Arifa S. Khan
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; bioinformatics analysis; 03 medical and health sciences; RVDB; reference virus database; adventitious viruses; high-throughput sequencing; viral sequences; Microbiology; QR1-502; Research Article; 3. Good health

To facilitate bioinformatics analysis of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data for the detection of both known and novel viruses, we have developed a new reference viral database (RVDB) that provides a broad representation of different virus species from eukaryotes by including all viral, virus-like, and virus-related sequences (excluding bacteriophages), regardless of their size. In particular, RVDB contains endogenous nonretroviral elements, endogenous retroviruses, and retrotransposons. Sequences were clustered to reduce redundancy while retaining high viral sequence diversity. A particularly useful feature of RVDB is the reduction of cellular sequences, which can enhance the run efficiency of large transcriptomic and genomic data analysis and increase the specificity of virus detection.