Victors: a web-based knowledge base of virulence factors in human and animal pathogens

Abstract

Virulence factors (VFs) are molecules that allow microbial pathogens to overcome host defense mechanisms and cause disease in a host. It is critical to study VFs for better understanding microbial pathogenesis and host defense mechanisms. Victors (http://www.phidias.us/victors) is a novel, manually curated, web-based integrative knowledge base and analysis resource for VFs of pathogens that cause infectious diseases in human and animals. Currently, Victors contains 5296 VFs obtained via manual annotation from peer-reviewed publications, with 4648, 179, 105 and 364 VFs originating from 51 bacterial, 54 viral, 13 parasitic and 8 fungal species, respectively. Our data analysis identified many VF-specific patterns. Within the global VF pool, cytoplasmic proteins were more common, while adhesins were less common compared to findings on protective vaccine antigens. Many VFs showed homology with host proteins and the human proteins interacting with VFs represented the hubs of human–pathogen interactions. All Victors data are queriable with a user-friendly web interface. The VFs can also be searched by a customized BLAST sequence similarity searching program. These VFs and their interactions with the host are represented in a machine-readable Ontology of Host–Pathogen Interactions. Victors supports the ‘One Health’ research as a vital source of VFs in human and animal pathogens.

The virulence of theCryptococcus neoformansVNIa-5 lineage is highly plastic and associated with isolate background

“…We aimed to identify upregulated genes in both BMD761 and induced LD2 compared with naïve LD2 that may explain the phenotypic difference. Focussing on genes which were experimentally known to be associated with virulence 17 , we identified 17 up-regulated virulence genes in both BMD761 and induced LD2 relative to naïve LD2 (Supplementary Table S3). Specfically, we found that QSP1, which encodes a secreted peptide that has previously been implicated in quorum sensing and the upregulation of virulence of C. neoformans , was significantly downregulated in both the highly virulent BMD761 isolate and the induced environmental isolate versus its naïve self (Supplementary Table S3) 18 .…”

Transcriptomic profiling of Streptococcus pyogenes M1T1 strain in a mouse model of necrotizing fasciitis

“…The data were also clustered by using k-means with 1,723 genes (k = 4) (iDEP). We classified the DEGs into functional categories based on the bacterial bioinformatics database and analysis resource PATRIC (www.patricbrc.org) [65], which is integrated with information from VFDB (http://www.mgc.ac.cn/VFs/) [66], Victors [67], subsystems technology toolkit ( RASTtk ) [68, 69], and KEGG map [70]. Genes were also classified into pathways based on BioCyc database [71].…”

Using Omics Technologies and Systems Biology to Identify Epitope Targets for the Development of Monoclonal Antibodies Against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

“…If these essential/virulence-associated epitopes are not targeted, there is high risk of epitope masking or switching, leading to rapid circumvention of the monoclonal therapy. Specialized resources such as PATRIC, VFDB, and Victors (41)(42)(43) compile virulence factors at the species level from dedicated research reports.…”