Bacterial and Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center (BV-BRC)

Sponsors

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Infectious diseases are a leading cause of illness and death worldwide, presenting a persistent existential risk to humanity. Disease epidemics such as COVID, MERS, SARS, and Ebola bring the issue into sharp focus. In contrast, perennial diseases such as influenza, tuberculosis, and sepsis create ongoing human health and welfare challenges. Antimicrobial resistance, difficulties in vaccine development, zoonotic transfer from animal reservoirs, and bioengineered threats further and inflame the problem.

In 2004, NIH/NIAID initiated the Bioinformatics Resource Centers for Infectious Diseases program. It provides public access to computational platforms and analysis tools that enable the collecting and integration of genomics and related research data relevant to infectious diseases, pathogens, and their interaction with host organisms. The Bacterial and Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center (BV-BRC) is utilized in this program.

Project Overview

The Bacterial and Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center (BV-BRC) is an information system designed to support the biomedical research community’s work on bacterial and viral infectious diseases by integrating vital pathogen information with rich data and analysis tools. BV-BRC combines the data, technology, and extensive user communities from two long-running centers: PATRIC, the bacterial system, and IRD/ViPR, the viral systems. In addition to nearly 1 million bacterial genomes and 9 million viral genomes, BV-BRC provides host data on protein structure and function, clinical studies, drug targets and resistance, epidemiology, and other features. As well, it offers open-source tools for data analysis and genomic annotation.

BV-BRC Website

Findings

BV-BRC and its predecessor systems have over 40,000 registered users, tens of thousands of unique visitors per month, over 18,000 citations, and over 100 publications.

Data and Tools
Team

Research Associate Professor

Senior Scientist

Senior Scientist

Research Assistant Professor

Research Associate Professor

Senior Software Architect

Research Scientist

In the News

The Bacterial and Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center (BV-BRC), a beta website that launched in February, “is one-stop shopping for your bacterial or viral genomic research,” said Ron Kenyon, a senior scientist in the Network Systems Science and Advanced Computing division of UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute.