iVirus: facilitating new insights in viral ecology with software and community datasets imbedded in a cyberinfrastructure

Abstract

Microbes impact nutrient and energy transformations throughout the worlds ecosystems, yet they do so under viral constraints. In complex communities, viral metagenome (virome) sequencing is transforming our ability to quantify viral diversity and impacts. While some bottlenecks, e.g., few reference genomes and non-quantitative viromics, have been overcome, the void of centralized datasets and specialized tools now prevents viromics from being broadly applied to answer fundamental ecological questions. Here we present iVirus, a community resource that leverages the CyVerse cyberinfrastructure to provide access to viromic tools and datasets. The iVirus Data Commons contains both raw and processed data from 1866 samples and 73 projects derived from global ocean expeditions, as well as existing and legacy public repositories. Through the CyVerse Discovery Environment, users can interrogate these datasets using existing analytical tools (software applications known as \"Apps\") for assembly, ORF prediction, and annotation, as well as several new Apps specifically developed for analyzing viromes. Because Apps are web-based and powered by CyVerse super-computing resources, they enable scalable analyses for a broad user base. Finally, a use-case scenario documents how to apply these advances towards new data. This growing iVirus resource should help researchers utilize viromics as yet another tool to elucidate viral roles in nature.