Database of virus genomes from ultra-deep sequencing of wastewater
Researchers at University of Missouri have conducted ultra-deep RNA sequencing of viral concentrates from wastewater (1 billion Illumina reads per sample). The resulting dataset spans 321 samples collected weekly from 11 cities between 2023-2025. As part of a tri-lab collaboration, scientists at LLNL and LANL cleaned, assembled, and annotated this metagenomic data, identifying nearly 200,000 viral genomes. Careful data curation resulted in a database containing 21,015 high-quality, near-complete viral genomes from wastewater. This database contains viruses predicted to infect a range of hosts including bacteria (most common viruses), plants (most abundant viruses), and vertebrates (rarest viruses). There are also numerous novel viruses that could not be well identified and whose host(s) are unknown. Just 7% of all genomes in the wastewater virus database had genus-level matches in the public NCBI database, and 17% matched to a recently created metagenomic virus database at that level (metaVR). The database will provide baseline information about viruses in wastewater that may be used to additional identify novel viruses during ongoing monitoring