The universal virus database ICTVdB

Recent events have catapulted biological weapons to the forefront of public attention. Although government and other agencies responded rapidly to many aspects of the threat, people were dismayed to discover the uncertainties involved in identifying different strains of pathogens. Clearly, much diverse information, ranging from soil microbiology to genetically engineered sequences in the genomes of pathogens, was necessary to precisely identify the strains of anthrax bacteria circulating in Fall 2001. For many microbiologists, this exercise in applying modern systematics under pressure justifies the philosophy adopted a decade ago by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. Compared with professional groups dealing with more complex organisms, ICTV committed itself to developing a universal database in 1991—one of the earliest initiatives in electronic data management in systematics.1 One ICTV goal is to use the virus database ICTVdB to describe all viruses of animals (vertebrates, invertebrates, and protozoa), plants (higher plants and algae), bacteria, fungi, and archaea at all taxonomic levels. This article describes the development and functions of ICTVdB, a database initially developed to facilitate the rapidly changing perception of what is important in characterizing a virus. Because ICTVdB offers precise virus identification and links an agreed taxonomy to sequence databases, it turns sequences into correctly identified viruses. Thus, it serves all areas of agriculture, human and veterinary medicine, and the pharmaceutical industry, and stays abreast of what characterizes a virus. The database uses the Delta system, the world standard for data exchange in taxonomy, which is designed to generate reports from the data matrix in hard copy and HTML format, produce interactive identification protocols online, and calculate distance matrices for cladistic and phylogenetic research to establish hypothetical relationships among organisms. I also describe a few of the data management issues resolved in ICTVdB, including how it is helping sequence databanks turn sequences submitted with incorrect taxonomies into identifiable viruses. ICTVdB has grown in concept and caTHE UNIVERSAL VIRUS DATABASE ICTVDB