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First of all forgive me for the bad written question.

I'm not a biologist. I'm neither a doctor nor a virologist. I am a physicist actually, and I have this question in mind since a long while.

What I'm trying to ask is if there is a sort of text file or a website (or a book) where I may read about viruses "composition".

"Composition" means something like

"This is the rhinovirus, and it's genetic "composition" is ACTGCT" (of course I just invented...).

I don't know how to express myself with good terms because I am not familiar with this field, so please feel free to edit the question if it may appear unclear.

Again, what I'm asking is for a sort of database of genetic sequences about viruses and so on.

Thanks in advance!

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NCBI houses a collection of viral genomes at the aptly named Viral Genomes portal. They currently have 5921 viral genomes and by going to the previous link you can browse sequences from the major viral families.

If you have a nucleic acid or amino acid sequence it can be searched against NCBI's sequences here.

Uniprot also have a viral protein sequence annotation project which they describe as such;

The concept of this website is to associate specific knowledge for each virus family with viral protein and genomic sequences. All the available information is presented in a concise and accessible virus fact sheet, associated with the ordered list of reviewed entries. The site covers the whole known virosphere. The database section allows access to UniProtKB protein entries, as well as to specific virology databases.

Our efforts are currently directed towards viral ontology and reference strain annotation. A robust ontology will allow a more precise definition of the involvement of each protein in viral replication steps. The reference strain annotation will become the benchmark for each of the 334 genera.

Their work can be accessed through uniprot.org or through the project portal at; http://viralzone.expasy.org/

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  • $\begingroup$ No worries. Uniprot or NCBI provide the sequences as flat files but the people who assemble the viralzone do a great job; their linked cartoons tie function to genes to taxonomic groupings with great clarity. $\endgroup$ – Michael_A Oct 20 '16 at 8:35

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