Finding and describing viruses is a crucial endeavor in the field of infectious diseases that advances our knowledge of viral ecology, evolution, and the dynamics of disease transmission. Conventional approaches to viral discovery frequently depend on culture-based or targeted assays, which can miss new or unexpected viral infections. With the development of high-throughput sequencing technology and the accessibility of huge RNA-Seq datasets, scientists are now equipped with effective tools for objective viral discovery.
Originally intended for transcriptome research, RNA-Seq data has proven to be a valuable resource for revealing previously unknown viral variety. In contrast to focused methods, RNA-Seq allows the detection of novel and known viruses without assuming their presence beforehand. This objective method is especially useful for investigating viral dark matter, which is the enormous pool of unknown viruses that live in a variety of ecosystems, including those involving people, animals, plants, and the environment.
The Sequence Read Archive (SRA), a sizable collection of high-throughput sequencing data maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), is one of the most important resources for objective viral discovery. A multitude of RNA-Seq datasets from many sources, such as clinical samples, environmental samples, and experimental research, are available in the SRA.
