Motivation
The SARS-CoV-2 is a strain of coronavirus which causes the Covid19 disease in humans. Reaching a peak in the spring of 2020, the world was affected by a pandemic, causing many negative impacts on health, travel, the economy, education, and many other aspects of daily life. Out of this tragedy however, new scientific interest in the field of virology and specifically of coronaviruses has flourished. Scientists across the world are rapidly researching more into the subject, journals have fast-tracked papers, and the world waits anxiously to understand more about SARS-Cov-2 and to ultimately obtain a vaccine.
What is this?
In order to facilitate the functional and evolutionary aspects of coronaviruses, we have created the Corona OMA Browser. This is a website with all the functionality of the OMA Browser, but for 119 Nidovirales species. This encompasses the human SARS viruses, but also other coronaviruses and other single-stranded RNA viruses. Some of these viruses affect humans, while others affect bats, mice, horses, pigs, turkeys, cats, ferrets, etc. This browser is intended to be a resource for researchers in the coronavirus community.
Altenhoff A et al., The OMA orthology database in 2018: retrieving evolutionary relationships among all domains of life through richer web and programmatic interfaces Nucleic Acids Research, 2018, 46 (D1): D477-D485 (doi:10.1093/nar/gkx1019).