BTV-GLUE: a new bioinformatic resource for genomic studies of Bluetongue virus

Bluetongue virus (BTV) is an arbovirus transmitted by biting midges (Culicoides pp.). BTV causes a severe disease (bluetongue) in domestic and wild ruminant species with high levels of morbidity and mortality. Bluetongue has emerged as an important disease in sheep and cattle worldwide. The BTV genome is composed by ten linear dsRNA segments, packaged within a triple-layered icosahedral protein-capsid, and encode 7 structural and 4/5 non-structural proteins. To date, there are at least 27 BTV serotypes (mainly determined by the VP2 outer capsid protein) circulating worldwide. In addition, high rates of reassortment involving all genome segments have been documented, complicating epidemiological studies and vaccination programmes. We have developed BTV-GLUE (http://btv.glue.cvr.ac.uk), a new bioinformatics sequence data resource for bluetongue virus. Sequences from the NCBI nucleotide database are curated along with complementary sequence metadata and are integrated together inside GLUE (http://tools.glue.cvr.ac.uk), a data-centric software package for capturing virus sequence data and organising it along evolutionary lines. The dataset also contains reference sequences with genome feature annotations, multiple sequence alignments, defined clades and phylogenetic trees, for each BTV segment and clade. A new automated genotyping tool for all segments has been developed. The resource may also be used as an offline bioinformatics toolkit. BTV-GLUE will help the BTV community to study varying aspects of BTV biology and evolution and will facilitate the adoption of a nomenclature that more easily distinguishes the properties of BTV strains circulating worldwide.