Five Thousand Virus Genomes

病毒是所有复杂生态系统的重要成员，从细菌到动物再到植物。它们在维持宿主种群平衡、家养和野生动植物的生产力和可持续性方面发挥着重要作用。病毒在维持全球重要的生态系统循环方面也至关重要，例如海洋的营养循环。然而，由于没有对任何陆地病毒进行全面分析，人们对居住在这些不同社区的病毒知之甚少。因此，这些调查现在将收集和分析来自三个主要陆地热带生态系统的至少5,000种植物RNA病毒的基因组：干燥森林、云雾森林和热带雨林，以及它们之间的交错，位于哥斯达黎加瓜纳卡斯特保护区。这将通过从这些保存良好的荒地收集野生植物，通过分析相关的双链RNA来评估任何病毒感染，并使用最先进的基因组测序技术快速确定病毒基因组序列来实现。这些数据将通过互联网公开，包括改进的生物信息学工具，以评估病毒的多样性、发病率、关系和移动。数据还将存放在GenBank中的一个独特的分类节点中，以向科学界提供可搜索性。将对数千个病毒基因组进行详细分析，其中大多数以前从未被描述过。病毒基因组将与其适当的宿主相连，并将确定荒地和农田之间复杂病毒的关系。这些研究将被纳入本科生和研究生的培训，通过继续坚定的承诺，积极地让本科生和研究生直接参与研究。调查人员将接待初中生和高中生与他们的老师进行为期半天的访问，并继续正在进行的、完善的、为期6周的夏季本科生培训计划，在该计划中，有寻找和包括少数族裔学生参与的既定记录。将通过向当地民间团体和大学生物、生物化学、化学和工程学会进行演讲，保持与社区和大学团体的联系。

Viruses are a vital member of all complex ecosystems, from bacteria to animals to plants. They play a significant role in maintaining host population balance, productivity and sustainability in both domestic and wild animals and plants. Viruses also are critical in maintaining globally important ecosystem cycles such as the ocean's nutrient cycle. However, little is known about the viruses that inhabit these diverse communities as no comprehensive analyses of any terrestrial viruses have been undertaken. Therefore these investigations now will collect and analyze the genomes of at least 5,000 plant RNA virus from three major terrestrial tropical ecosystems: dry forest; cloud forest; and rain forest; and the intergrades between them that is located in the of the Area Conservacion Guanacaste in Costa Rica. This will be accomplished by collecting wild land plants from these well conserved wildlands, assessing any virus infection by analyzing the associated double-stranded RNA, and rapidly determining the viral genomic sequences using state-of-the art genome sequencing technology. These data will be publicly available through the internet and include improved bioinformatics tools to assess diversity, incidence, relationships and movement of the viruses. Data also will be deposited in a unique Taxonomy Node in GenBank to provide searchability to the scientific community. There will be a detailed analysis of thousands of viral genomes, most of which have never been described before. The viral genomes will be linked to their appropriate hosts, and the relationships of the complex viruses between wildlands and agricultural lands will be determined. These studies will be incorporated into the training of undergraduate and graduate students, by continuing strong commitments to actively involve undergraduate honors students and graduate students directly in the research. The investigators will host half-day visits by middle school and high school students with their teachers and continue the ongoing, well established, 6 week summer undergraduate training program in which there is an established record of seeking out and including minority student participation. Outreach to community and university groups will be maintained through presentations to local civic groups and university biology, biochemistry, chemistry, and engineering societies.