The University of Pune has developed an indigenous virus identification software programme VirGen by its biotechnologists and researchers. This is first of its kind of software present in the world that provides complete genome sequence of viruses.

The project started in the year 2002 under the guidance of UoP vice chancellor Dr Ashok Kolaskar, is funded by the union government's department of biotechnology. The biotechnologists and researchers involved in the project include Dr. Urmila Kulkarni, Shriram Bhosle (student) and Sunitha Manjari (student).

Talking to Pharmabiz, Dr. Urmila Kulkarni said presently there are no genome resources available for viruses and VirGen provides a vast resource for the viruses. "The VirGen software imparts detailed information of various viral genomes present in plants, animals, humans and other living things in a sequence space and structured fashion", noted Dr. Kulkarni.

The project has also received recognition in the Nucleic Acid Research Journal published in UK, she said. VirGen offers the details of approximately 1,450 viral genomes. "The database of viral genome resource has been developed with the objective of serving a complete genome sequence of viruses with value-addition derived data and data mining tools," said Dr. Kulkarni.

VirGen software programme constantly archives the results of comparisons of genomes, proteomes and individual proteins within and between different viral species, she pointed out.

VirGen is the first resource database that curates viral genomes for "alternate names" of proteins and then archives the results of whole genome phylogeny. It displays, an exhaustive phylogenetic tree of every single viral species computed using the whole-genome sequence data, she added.

One unique features of the VirGen is that the software also attempts to link the viral genome to its respective family history and the available antiviral drugs and vaccine if any. The software has been patented in the US.

The future plan aims at gathering more genome data of various viral families and additional methods for prediction of B and T cell antigenic determinants said Dr. Kulkarni.