
Austin, Minn. — The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, is pleased to announce that Dr. Vijay Reddy, PhD, and his research group’s work on the creation of Virus World Database (VWdb) was recently featured in Scientia, a science communication publication. This online repository is the largest integrated database of viruses in the world, serving as a vital resource for scientists around the globe seeking to accelerate progress on viral research projects that improve human health and save lives.
Viruses of all kinds have a tremendous impact on human health, causing a variety of diseases. But in order to develop treatments, cures, and preventative methods for deadly and otherwise harmful viruses, researchers must first obtain critical information about the viruses, including their genome sequences and their three-dimensional structures. Fortunately, the VWdb is a useful resource for researchers all around the globe that can be accessed freely as they work toward overcoming the diseases caused by the viruses they study. The database, the largest of its kind in the world, makes freely accessible information on virus lineages, genomes, sequences, structures, and hosts (the organisms in which viruses take up residence) of nearly 250,000 different viruses and counting.
The database is maintained by a team of virologists and computer scientists associated with the Reddy laboratory, particularly Oscar Rojas Labra, Researcher 2 at The Hormel Institute. VWdb is updated on a weekly basis—without the need for manual intervention.
“Moreover, one can quickly gain access to all the available sequence and structural information on a particular virus from its information page. The user-friendly interface (Virus Taxonomy Explorer) of VWdb makes it easy to search for viruses of interest and download the related information in various formats (e.g., Excel, CSV, and JSON). We have also created several Application Programming Interface (API) tools to programmatically access the information from VWdb without using the web-interface.”
In addition to researchers, the database is also of use to a wide cross-section of society including health care professionals, public health officials, educators, ecologists, and curious members of the public.
Read the Scientia article here.
To explore the Virus World Database, visit https://viperdb.org/vw/.
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ABOUT THE HORMEL INSTITUTE
The Hormel Institute is an independent biomedical research department within the University of Minnesota’s Office of the Vice President for Research. Collaborative research partners include Masonic Cancer Center UMN (a Comprehensive Cancer Center as designated by the National Cancer Institute, NIH), Mayo Clinic, and many other leading research centers worldwide. The Hormel Institute, which tripled in size in 2008 and doubled again in size in 2016, is home to some of the world’s most cutting-edge research technologies and expert scientists. Over the next few years, The Hormel Institute will broaden its impact through innovative, world-class research in its quest to improve human health.