Viruses 2012, 4(8), 1318-1327; doi:10.3390/v4081318
Article

PAirwise Sequence Comparison (PASC) and Its Application in the Classification of Filoviruses

Yiming Bao* email, Vyacheslav Chetverninemail and Tatiana Tatusovaemail
National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 3 July 2012; in revised form: 16 August 2012 / Accepted: 16 August 2012 / Published: 20 August 2012
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Filovirus Research 2012)
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Abstract: PAirwise Sequence Comparison (PASC) is a tool that uses genome sequence similarity to help with virus classification. The PASC tool at NCBI uses two methods: local alignment based on BLAST and global alignment based on Needleman-Wunsch algorithm. It works for complete genomes of viruses of several families/groups, and for the family of Filoviridae, it currently includes 52 complete genomes available in GenBank. It has been shown that BLAST-based alignment approach works better for filoviruses, and therefore is recommended for establishing taxon demarcation criteria. When more genome sequences with high divergence become available, these demarcations will most likely become more precise. The tool can compare new genome sequences of filoviruses with the ones already in the database, and propose their taxonomic classification.
Keywords: Filoviridae; filovirus; ICTV; International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses; National Center for Biotechnology Information; NCBI; PAirwise Sequence Comparison; PASC; virus classification; virus taxonomy

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Cite This Article

MDPI and ACS Style

Bao, Y.; Chetvernin, V.; Tatusova, T. PAirwise Sequence Comparison (PASC) and Its Application in the Classification of Filoviruses. Viruses 2012, 4, 1318-1327.

AMA Style

Bao Y, Chetvernin V, Tatusova T. PAirwise Sequence Comparison (PASC) and Its Application in the Classification of Filoviruses. Viruses. 2012; 4(8):1318-1327.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Bao, Yiming; Chetvernin, Vyacheslav; Tatusova, Tatiana. 2012. "PAirwise Sequence Comparison (PASC) and Its Application in the Classification of Filoviruses." Viruses 4, no. 8: 1318-1327.

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