ViralZone and the Revolution in 3D Virus Structure

This course will be streamed to registered participants only.

Overview

ViralZone is a SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics web resource for all viral genera and families. It provides molecular biology information on all kind of viruses, and bridges knowledge to virus or sequence databases. For each virus or family page, ViralZone provides easy access to the corresponding UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot and GenBank viral protein entries. It also contains virion and genome images.

Although virus genomes display immense genomic variation, most viral proteins are limited in structural space. Recent advances in structural modelling have yielded new methods for analyzing the viral world. Researchers have recently used AlphaFold to successfully predict the shapes of 67,715 proteins from nearly 4,500 virus species that infect eukaryotes, including plants, animals and humans. These viral protein 3D structures are now available in ViralZone, with links to new tools for homology searches in 3D space or even for constructing trees from the structural data.

This webinar (2x45min) provides an introduction to the structural knowledge of viral proteins and the main tools available to study them.

Audience

This course is addressed to students, postdocs, and researchers, from any scientific environment (academia, facilities, companies, etc.) interested in viral proteins.

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the participants are expected to:

• describe the most important viral folds in all of virology
• use the ViralZone, BV-BRC or BFVD databases to find the 3D models of viral proteins
• use new available tools to create 3D models, search for homologies or create trees

Prerequisites

Knowledge / competencies

Before the course, you should meet the learning outcomes of, or have taken:
ViralZone: Studying viral diversity

Technical

This webinar will be streamed, you are thus required to have your own computer with an Internet connection. All the suggested resources are available without you having to install or code anything.

Application

Attendance is free-of-charge; however, registration is mandatory.

Venue and Time

This webinar will be streamed using Zoom. It will start at 15:00 CET (09:00 EST) and end around 17:00 CET (11:00 EST).

All registered participants will receive the information for remotely connecting to the online meeting room by email one working day before the webinar.

Additional information

Coordination: Monique Zahn, SIB Training group.

You are welcome to register to the SIB courses mailing list to be informed of all future courses and workshops, as well as all important deadlines using the form here.

Please note that participation in SIB courses is subject to our general conditions.

SIB abides by the ELIXIR Code of Conduct. Participants of SIB courses are also required to abide by the same code.

For more information, please contact training@sib.swiss.