VIRify

VIRify identifies and taxonomically classifies viral contigs and prophages from metagenomic assemblies using curated viral profile hidden Markov models to characterize prokaryotic and eukaryotic viral taxa.

Key Features:

• Detection and annotation: Identifies viral contigs and prophages in metagenomic assemblies and annotates them using curated viral profile hidden Markov models (HMMs).
• Curated taxonomic marker HMMs: Employs a curated set of viral profile HMMs as specific taxonomic markers covering prokaryotic and eukaryotic viral taxa.
• Taxonomic classification: Classifies viral contigs across viral families, genera, and other taxonomic ranks and reports an average classification accuracy of 86.6%.
• Classification refinement: Refines outdated and shallow taxonomic classifications to improve taxonomic resolution.

Scientific Applications:

• Microbial Ecology: Identification and classification of viral sequences from microbial mock communities to study interactions within microbial ecosystems.
• Human Health Research: Application to human gut metagenomic data to increase the number of taxonomically classified viral sequences for virome studies.
• Marine Biology: Detection and classification of prokaryotic and eukaryotic viruses within 243 marine metagenomic assemblies to assess marine viral diversity.

Methodology:

Integrates detection, annotation, and taxonomic classification by identifying viral contigs and prophages from metagenomic data using curated viral profile HMMs tailored to recognize a wide range of viral taxa and by refining existing classifications.