Institute scientist and team’s database work featured in science communication publication

The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, has announced 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. 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. 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. 

“Significantly, we recently added information on the various diseases caused by different viruses, associated symptoms, and the affected hosts using AI-powered tools,” Reddy said. “Using the Viral Diseases Explorer tool at VWdb, it is easy to survey the diversity of viruses and the spectrum of diseases they cause.” 

“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. 

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