Database Protein sequence database for pathogenic arenaviruses Huynh

Background: Arenaviruses are a family of rodent-borne viruses that cause several hemorrhagic fevers. These diseases can be devastating and are often lethal. Herein, to aid in the design and development of diagnostics, treatments and vaccines for arenavirus infections, we have developed a database containing protein sequences from the seven pathogenic arenaviruses (Junin, Guanarito, Sabia, Machupo, Whitewater Arroyo, Lassa and LCMV). Results: The database currently contains a non-redundant set of 333 protein sequences which were manually annotated. All entries were linked to NCBI and cited PubMed references. The database has a convenient query interface including BLAST search. Sequence variability analyses were also performed and the results are hosted in the database. Conclusion: The database is available at http://epitope.liai.org:8080/projects/arena and can be used to aid in studies that require proteomic information from pathogenic arenaviruses. Background Arenaviridae are a family of viruses whose members are associated with rodent-transmitted disease in humans. Each virus usually is associated with a particular rodent host species in which it is maintained. Arenavirus infections, occur when an individual comes into contact with the excretions of an infected rodent, are relatively common in humans in some area of the world and primarily cause hemorrhagic fevers, including Lassa fever (LF; Lassa virus), Argentine hemorrhagic fever (AHF; Junin virus), Bolivian hemorrhagic fever (BHF; Machupo virus), Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever (VHF; Guanarito virus) and Brazillian hemorrhagic fever (BrHF; Sabia virus) [1-6]. These diseases can be devastating and often lethal. Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), a known human teratogen, can cause aseptic meningitis [7-9], and Whitewater Arroyo Virus (WWA) was recently attributed to two deaths in California [10,11]. The arenaviruses can be classified phylogenetically into Old World (which includes LCMV and Lassa virus) and New World; this latter group has been further divided into three lineages, A-C [12,13]. Except for WWA virus which belongs to lineage A, the four most pathogenic New World agents (Junin, Machupo, Guanarito and Sabia viruses) all belong to lineage B, suggesting that the highly Published: 8 February 2007 Immunome Research 2007, 3:1 doi:10.1186/1745-7580-3-1 Received: 20 October 2006 Accepted: 8 February 2007 This article is available from: http://www.immunome-research.com/content/3/1/1 © 2007 Bui et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.