Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
geometry involved in the formation of the rhabdovirus virion remains
to be elucidated.
The virus can infect all warm-blooded animals and causes acute
disease of the central nervous system. It is usually transmitted by the
bite of infected animals. The disease has five general stages of pro-
gression: incubation, prodrome, acute neurologic period, coma, and
death.
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The incubation period — the time between infection and the
onset of clinical symptoms — is usually 1 to 2 months; extreme cases
in which the incubation period was less than a week or several years
have also been reported. The disease is almost always fatal, if not
promptly treated.
The Pathogen Portal Project (PathPort)
In addition to providing information from the PATRIC project
through a web-browser interface, as required by the contract, we pro-
posed an additional means of access through the Pathogen Portal
(PathPort). PathPort, developed at VBI through funding from the
Department of Defense, is an integrated platform providing biologi-
cal data and analysis tools to scientists studying the host-pathogen-
environment interaction triangle, with a particular focus on
pathogens that are considered to be biodefense priorities. PathPort
utilizes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) consisting of web-
services and a client-side JAVA application, ToolBus, which utilizes
plugins for data visualizations. ToolBus acts as a “bus” for contacting
data and tools (from the SOA) and serves as a single, consistent user
interface. Information on the PathPort project is available at
http://pathport.vbi.vt.edu/main/home.php.
Biological data are distributed across different databases (e.g.
GenBank, SwissProt) and are stored in a variety of formats. The need
for the development of cyberinfrastructure is highlighted by the fact
that data analysis tools use different, and often incompatible, data for-
mats. This heterogeneity in the storage, representation, and use of
biological data is a challenge that PathPort seeks to address by differ-
ent data sets and tools. PathPort has been designed to be a flexible,
scalable, platform-independent, and seamless system that allows the
user access to different kinds of biological data and analysis tools.
