Another emerging problem in viral genomics is inconsistent and/or inaccurate annotation among related viral genome sequences. This issue often reflects differing annotation processes and ongoing experimental work and can lead to confusion among data consumers and make comparative analysis between genomes difficult. This problem is addressed within the NCBI Virus Variation Resource (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/viruses/variation/) where computational pipelines are employed to provide up-to-date, standardized annotation for several viruses (58). Currently, these pipelines calculate standardized gene and protein boundaries for all Influenza virus, Dengue virus, and West Nile virus sequences and standardized gene and protein names and metadata terms for these and two other viruses, Middle East respiratory coronavirus and Ebolavirus. This standardized data is then leveraged within a specialized, metadata-centric search interface that facilitates the easy retrieval of sequences based on specific biological criteria.
