VirJenDB: the 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.