CAREER: Bioinformatic Resources for Promoting Research and Education of Giant Viruses

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Giant viruses are diverse and important constituents of ecosystems around the globe. These viruses have physical dimensions and genome lengths that exceed those of some bacteria and their genomes often encode components of glycolysis, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, and the protein synthesis apparatus, raising important questions regarding the limits of viral complexity. Giant viruses can also incorporate (endogenize) into the genomes of their host, forming Giant Endogenous Viral Elements (GEVEs) that play an important role in eukaryotic genome evolution. Despite the intriguing complexity of giant viruses and their roles in many important biological processes, the bioinformatic infrastructure available for studying these viruses lags far behind that of cellular lineages, and new computational resources for their analysis are needed. This project will develop novel bioinformatic tools and resources for the genomic analysis of giant viruses, and establish an undergraduate teaching curriculum focused on giant virus discovery. Both graduate and undergraduate students as well as postdocs will be trained to analyze viral genomes and develop novel bioinformatic resources. Giant viruses are important members of ecosystems around the globe. Recent advances in cultivation-independent approaches have recovered a large number of draft metagenome-derived viral genomes, but at present it is difficult to assess the quality of these genomes or classify them. These limitations substantially hinder progress in understanding the diversity and environmental impact of these environmentally-relevant viruses. Research in this project will develop novel bioinformatic tools to assess the quality of metagenome-derived giant viruses and integrate them into a taxonomic and phylogenetic framework. Moreover, given the important role of endogenous giant viruses in the genome evolution of many host lineages, tools for quantifying the role of giant viruses in eukaryotic genome evolution will also be developed. The resources developed in this project will be integrated into an undergraduate teaching curriculum focused on giant virus discovery. Results of this work will be posted on the Giant Virus Database https://faylward.github.io/GVDB/. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.