The comprehensive virus genome database from Jena

Bioinformatics research in the virology domain requires the support of prior knowledge on viruses. Databases allow for efficient access to structured data due to a large volume capacity, simultaneous access for multiple users, and enabling search and sort functionality on the data. Currently, virus databases are subject to multiple issues or are focused on a particular virus taxonomic group. A universal database that covers all of the publicly available data about viruses is still missing. We tackled this problem by incorporating virus data including from various databases to make a global search platform over their metadata. The resulting outputs allow the user to download selected genome sequences and/or metadata directly. Multiple curation steps will be applied to the metadata derived from each database. The goal of VirJenDB group is to develop an umbrella database covering all viruses in a single platform which will provide user-friendly access to virus sequences and other data for downstream analyses.