Virusbanker

Virusbanker provides organization, filtering, and export of Bunyaviridae nucleotide and protein sequences and alignments for comparative, evolutionary, and surveillance analyses.

Key Features:

• Database structure: Organizes Bunyaviridae sequences and alignments into two spreadsheet-style tables stored in a MySQL database.
• Implementation: Implemented in Java with a MySQL backend.
• Metadata annotation: Records include segment type, gene, protein, species, strain, sequence length, terminal sequences, and country and date of isolation.
• Sorting and filtering: Provides column-based sorting and filtering to select and manage partial and full sequences from segmented genomes.
• Heuristic data management: Applies heuristic criteria to rapidly compile and refine large datasets of aligned nucleotide and protein sequences.
• Export and integration: Exports sequences with customizable titles derived from metadata columns and can pass sequences directly to the sequence editor Jalview.

Scientific Applications:

• Genomic research: Facilitates study of genome organization, evolution, and diversity within the Bunyaviridae family using nucleotide and protein alignments.
• Disease surveillance: Supports tracking of virus strains by country and date of isolation to inform epidemiological analyses.
• Vaccine development: Aids identification of conserved sequence regions across Bunyaviridae that may serve as vaccine targets.

Methodology:

Implemented in Java with a MySQL backend; sequences and alignments are stored in two spreadsheet tables, heuristic criteria are applied to compile and refine aligned nucleotide and protein datasets, and sequences can be exported with metadata-derived titles or sent to Jalview.