Viral metagenomics

[11] In the 2002 metagenomics study the researchers found that 65% of the sequences of DNA and RNA viruses had no matches in the reference databases.

[4] Metagenomic analysis uses whole genome shotgun sequencing to characterize microbial diversity in clinical and environmental samples.

[13][14] The IMG/VR system and the IMG/VR v.2.0 are the largest interactive public virus databases with over 760,000 metagenomic viral sequences and isolate viruses and serves as a starting point for the sequence analysis of viral fragments derived from metagenomic samples.

However, with larger viral genomes and the heterogeneity of RNA viruses multiple overlapping primers may be required to cover the amplification of all genotypes.

The probes, which can be bound to a solid phase and capture and pull down complementary DNA sequences in the sample.

[9] The presence of overlapping probes increases the tolerance for primer mismatches but their design requires high cost and time so a rapid response is limited.

Success of this method is dependent available reference sequences to create the probes and is not suitable for characterization of novel viruses.

Engineered mutant virus strains have been used to alter the coloration and size of various ornamental plants and promote the health of crops.

[7][26] Viral metagenomics is readily used to discover novel viruses, with a major focus on those zoonotic or pathogenic to humans.

[27] Since the majority of human pandemics are zoonotic in origin, metagenomic surveillance can provide faster identification of novel viruses and their reservoirs.

[28] One such surveillance program is the Global Virome Project (GVP) an international collaborative research initiative based at the One Health Institute at the University of California, Davis.

[27][31] Viral metagenomics has been used to test for virus related cancers and difficult to diagnose cases in clinical diagnostics.

[32][33] A mixture of different sequencing platforms are used for clinical viral metagenomics, the most common being instruments from Illumina and Oxford Nanopore Technologies.