Abstract
As viruses continue to pose risks to global health, having a better understanding of virus–host protein–protein interactions aids in the development of treatments and vaccines. Here, we introduce Viruses.STRING, a protein–protein interaction database specifically catering to virus–virus and virus–host interactions. This database combines evidence from experimental and text-mining channels to provide combined probabilities for interactions between viral and host proteins. The database contains 177,425 interactions between 239 viruses and 319 hosts. The database is publicly available at viruses.string-db.org, and the interaction data can also be accessed through the latest version of the Cytoscape STRING app.
Highlights
Viruses are well known as global threats to human and animal welfare
We provide virus-related probabilistic interaction networks derived from text mining and experiment channels
Text mining for virus species and proteins was conducted using the dictionary-based software described in [23], the same tool that is used for the STRING text mining pipeline
Summary
Viruses are well known as global threats to human and animal welfare Viral diseases such as hepatitis caused by Hepatitis C virus (HCV) and cervical cancer caused by Human papillomavirus (HPV) each cause more than a quarter of a million deaths worldwide each year [1]. Climate change and changing land use patterns are causing humans and livestock to be exposed to novel viruses for which there are currently no vaccines or antiviral drugs [4]. This trend will continue as the habitats of vectors that carry arboviruses expand [5], and as humans continue to come into contact with wildlife, creating opportunities for zoonosis [6]. Antiviral drugs have been highly effective at preventing the progression of HIV infection to AIDS [9]; the effectiveness of antiviral drugs can decrease over time due to the development of drug resistant viral strains [10,11,12,13]
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