Virus Particle Explorer (VIPER), a Website for Virus Capsid Structures and Their Computational Analyses

Abstract

The number of icosahedral-capsid structures determined at a near-atomic level of resolution is growing rapidly as advances in synchrotron radiation sources, fast-readout detectors, and computer hardware and software are made. Hence, there is an increasing need to organize these mega-assemblies into a uniform and easy-to-use database. The coordinates of the icosahedral-capsid structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) (2) follow a variety of conventions in which the icosahedral symmetry axes are oriented differently in the orthogonal coordinate system. While trying to analyze the various capsid structures en masse, we became aware of the need for a database in which all capsid structures (coordinates) are stored in a standard icosahedral orientation. Such a structural database of viral capsids would indeed facilitate the development of tools for high-throughput analyses of the virus structures. We report here the creation of a web-base (website and database) of virus structures, the Virus Particle Explorer (VIPER), which can be accessed through the World Wide Web (WWW) at the uniform resource locator (URL) http://mmtsb.scripps.edu /viper/. The organization of the VIPER database is shown in Fig. ​Fig.1.1. FIG. 1 Flow chart showing the organization of the contents of the VIPER site. The VIPER database contains the structures of viral capsids determined at a nearly atomic-level resolution. Coordinates of the capsid structures are stored in the z(2)-3-5-x(2) convention. ...