ViPR: an open bioinformatics database and analysis resource for virology research

Pickett, Brett E.; Sadat, Eva L.; Zhang, Yun; Noronha, Jyothi M.; Squires, R. Burke; Hunt, Victoria; Liu, Mengya; Kumar, Sanjeev; Zaremba, Sam; Gu, Zhiping; Zhou, Liwei; Larson, Christopher N.; Dietrich, Jonathan; Klem, Edward B.; Scheuermann, Richard H.

Conclusions from scientific use case. The workflow that was followed to explore the scientific use case confirms previous findings that DENV-2 in the Western Hemisphere exists as multiple endemic lineages that cocirculate among human and vector host populations (33, 34) . The meta-CATS analysis identified 37 amino acid variations that significantly distinguish these DENV-2 lineages, including one located within a known b-strand of the E protein. Additional investigation will be required to determine whether sequence differences in any of these individual positions or their combinations affect the secondary structure of the involved protein or play a role in dictating different phenotypic characteristics of these two virus lineages. The scientific use case addressed here underscores the ability of ViPR to assist in generating biologically relevant hypotheses that can then be tested experimentally.