FishPathogens.eu/vhsv: a user-friendly viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus isolate and sequence database.

A database has been created, http://www.FishPathogens.eu, with the aim of providing a single repository for collating important information on significant pathogens of aquaculture, relevant to their control and management. This database will be developed, maintained and managed as part of the European Community Reference Laboratory for Fish Diseases function. This concept has been initially developed for viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus and will be extended in future to include information on other significant aquaculture pathogens. Information included for each isolate comprises sequence, geographical origin, host origin and useful key literature. Various search mechanisms make it easy to find specific groups of isolates. Search results can be presented in several different ways including table-based, map-based and graph-based outputs. When retrieving sequences, the user is given freedom to obtain data from any selected part of the genome of interest. The output of the sequence search can be readily retrieved as a FASTA file ready to be imported into a sequence alignment tool of choice, facilitating further molecular epidemiological study.