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VIPERdb: a relational database for structural virology.

Shepherd CM, Borelli IA, Lander G, Natarajan P, Siddavanahalli V, Bajaj C, Johnson JE, Brooks CL, Reddy VS

Department of Molecular Biology, TPC-6 The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.

VIPERdb (http://viperdb.scripps.edu) is a database for icosahedral virus capsid structures. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive resource specific to the needs of the structural virology community, with an emphasis on the description and comparison of derived data from structural and energetic analyses of capsids. A relational database implementation based on a schema for macromolecular structure makes the data highly accessible to the user, allowing detailed queries at the atomic level. Together with curation practices that maintain data uniformity, this will facilitate structural bioinformatics studies of virus capsids. User friendly search, visualization and educational tools on the website allow both structural and derived data to be examined easily and extensively. Links to relevant literature, sequence and taxonomy databases are provided for each entry.

Published 29 December 2005 in Nucleic Acids Res, 34: D386-9.
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