A web-based genotyping resource for viral sequences

The Genotyping tool at the National Center for Biotechnology Information is a web-based program that identifies the genotype (or subtype) of recombinant or non-recombinant viral nucleotide sequences. It works by using BLAST to compare a query sequence to a set of reference sequences for known genotypes. Predefined reference genotypes exist for three major viral pathogens: human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV). User-defined reference sequences can be used at the same time. The query sequence is broken into segments for comparison to the reference so that the mosaic organization of recombinant sequences could be revealed. The results are displayed graphically using color-coded genotypes. Therefore, the genotype(s) of any portion of the query can quickly be determined. The Genotyping tool can be found at: http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/projects/genotyping/formpage.cgi.