Standards for Sequencing Viral Genomes in the Era of High-Throughput Sequencing

Ladner, Jason T.; Beitzel, Brett; Chain, Patrick S. G.; Davenport, Matthew G.; Donaldson, Eric; Frieman, Matthew; Kugelman, Jeffrey; Kuhn, Jens H.; O’Rear, Jules; Sabeti, Pardis C.; Wentworth, David E.; Wiley, Michael R.; Yu, Guo-Yun; Sozhamannan, Shanmuga; Bradburne, Christopher; Palacios, Gustavo

V iruses represent the greatest source of biological diversity on Earth, and with the help of high-throughput (HT) sequencing technologies, great strides are being made toward the genomic characterization of this diversity (1) (2) (3) . Genome sequences play a critical role in our understanding of viral evolution, disease epidemiology, surveillance, diagnosis, and countermeasure development and thus represent valuable resources which must be properly documented and curated to ensure future utility. Here, we outline a set of viral genome quality standards, similar in concept to those proposed for large DNA genomes (4) but focused on the particular challenges of and needs for research on small RNA/ DNA viruses, including characterization of the genomic diversity inherent in all viral samples/populations. Our goal is to define a common vocabulary that will allow comparison of genome quality across different research groups, sequencing platforms, and assembly techniques.