**2.3. Virus Pathogen Database and Analysis Resource (ViPR)**

The ViPR [51] is supported under the Bioinformatics Resource Centers (BRC) programme of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The database currently provides access to molecular data of viruses including complete genomes of 14 viral families. Analytical and visualization tools for metadata-driven statistical sequence analysis, data filtering, analytical workflows and utility of personal workbench are provided to the users.

In addition to these, several organism-specific resources have been developed such as HCV Database [52] for *Hepatitis C virus* and IVDB [53] for *Influenza virus* and HIV [54].

Annotation of the sequence (gene/genome/protein) records is an integral step in downstream processing of database entries. A well-curated reference record serves as template for transfer of annotation in terms of features such as gene boundaries, associated functions (molecular/ cellular/pathway) and non-coding regions [49]. Such annotations will be highly useful in subsequent analysis and model building. The challenges of managing dedicated resources for viral genomes are relatively different as compared to the genomic databases of model and other organisms. The pace of sequencing and the quantum of genomic data being generated are affecting identification of reference genomes and annotations of genomes of strains and isolates. Additionally, to study the spatio-temporal evolution and to model the viral popula‐ tions, it is desirable to tag metadata such as the place and date of isolation of viruses with the corresponding genomic entries.
