The hepatitis C sequence database in Los Alamos

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a significant public health threat worldwide. The virus is highly variable and evolves rapidly, making it an elusive target for the immune system and for vaccine and drug design. Presently, ∼50 000 HCV sequences have been published. A central website that provides annotated sequences and analysis tools will be helpful to HCV scientists worldwide. The HCV sequence database collects and annotates sequence data, and provides them to the public via a website that contains a user-friendly search interface and a large number of sequence analysis tools, following the model of the highly regarded and widely used Los Alamos HIV database. The HCV website can be accessed via http://hcv.lanl.gov and http://hcv-db.org.