加拿大英属哥伦比亚大学Artem Babaian团队合作揭示实现千兆碱基规模的序列比对。这一研究成果于2022年1月26日在线发表在国际学术期刊《自然》上。
研究人员开发了一个云计算基础设施，Serratus，用于实现千兆碱基规模的超高通量序列比对。研究人员搜索了570万个生物多样性样本（10.2千兆碱基）的标志基因RNA依赖性RNA聚合酶，发现了远超过105种新型RNA病毒，从而将已知物种的数量扩大了大约一个数量级。研究人员分别描述了与冠状病毒、δ型肝炎病毒和巨大噬菌体有关的新型病毒特征，并分析了它们的环境库。
为了促进正在进行的病毒发现革命，研究人员为这些数据和工具建立了一个免费和全面的数据库。扩大已知的病毒序列多样性可以揭示新出现的病原体的进化起源，改善病原体监测，进而预测和缓解未来的大流行病。
据了解，公共数据库包含了地球上的核酸序列集合，但由于缺乏有效的方法来搜索这个数据库（超过了20千兆碱基，并且正在以指数形式增长），它们的系统探索受到了抑制。
附：英文原文
Title: Petabase-scale sequence alignment catalyses viral discovery
Author: Edgar, Robert C., Taylor, Jeff, Lin, Victor, Altman, Tomer, Barbera, Pierre, Meleshko, Dmitry, Lohr, Dan, Novakovsky, Gherman, Buchfink, Benjamin, Al-Shayeb, Basem, Banfield, Jillian F., de la Pea, Marcos, Korobeynikov, Anton, Chikhi, Rayan, Babaian, Artem
Issue&Volume: 2022-01-26
Abstract: Public databases contain a planetary collection of nucleic acid sequences, but their systematic exploration has been inhibited by a lack of efficient methods for searching this corpus, which (at the time of writing) exceeds 20 petabases and is growing exponentially1. Here we developed a cloud computing infrastructure, Serratus, to enable ultra-high-throughput sequence alignment at the petabase scale. We searched 5.7million biologically diverse samples (10.2petabases) for the hallmark gene RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and identified well over 105 novel RNA viruses, thereby expanding the number of known species by roughly an order of magnitude. We characterized novel viruses related to coronaviruses, hepatitis delta virus and huge phages, respectively, and analysed their environmental reservoirs. To catalyse the ongoing revolution of viral discovery, we established a free and comprehensive database of these data and tools. Expanding the known sequence diversity of viruses can reveal the evolutionary origins of emerging pathogens and improve pathogen surveillance for the anticipation and mitigation of future pandemics.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04332-2
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04332-2
Nature：《自然》，创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：69.504
官方网址：http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接：http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html
本期文章：《自然》：Online/在线发表
