VirusFinder: Software for Efficient and Accurate Detection of Viruses and Their Integration Sites in Host Genomes through Next Generation Sequencing Data

Abstract

Next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies allow us to explore virus interactions with host genomes that lead to carcinogenesis or other diseases; however, this effort is largely hindered by the dearth of efficient computational tools. Here, we present a new tool, VirusFinder, for the identification of viruses and their integration sites in host genomes using NGS data, including whole transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq), whole genome sequencing (WGS), and targeted sequencing data. VirusFinder's unique features include the characterization of insertion loci of virus of arbitrary type in the host genome and high accuracy and computational efficiency as a result of its well-designed pipeline. The source code as well as additional data of VirusFinder is publicly available at http://bioinfo.mc.vanderbilt.edu/VirusFinder. © 2013 Wang et al.