The Influenza Genome Sequencing
Project, funded by The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), aims to rapidly sequence
flu viruses from samples collected from all over the world, from birds, pigs, and other animals, as well as humans. The
viral sequences, which are being generated at The J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), are deposited in GenBank, and
these data have been used to create the Influenza Virus Resource.
The main component of the Influenza Virus Resource is the NCBI Influenza
Virus Sequence Database, where users can build queries, retrieve sequences, find complete genome sets,
BLAST a flu sequence against the database, do multiple sequence alignment, and build clustering or phylogenetic trees.
In addition to the sequence data, this resource provides an influenza virus sequence annotation tool, as well as links to other Flu-related NCBI resources listed below.
Links to recent publications on flu research and flu sequence updates in GenBank are also provided.
This resource enables scientists to compare influenza virus strains so that emergent variants can be more rapidly identified, and
vaccines developed accordingly. As the library of viral sequences grows, it will act as a reference to help further our
understanding of how avian viruses spread to humans, and how influenza activity spreads throughout the world.
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