Application of bioinformatic procedures for identification of the impact of the viral infections in hemotherapy

Abstract

Since the first use of the term metagenomics in the scientific community to identify environmental microbial communities by shotgun sequencing both the equipment and the applications of metagenomics have evolved dramatically. Over the time, the environmental metagenomics gave place for the use of clinical metagenomics, mainly for characterization of emerging viruses. In Brazil, the analysis of the virome in the field of hemotherapy is scarcely studied. Among the major challenges, appears the bioinformatic analysis due to operational and computational problems as well as the lack of trained human resources to work in the field. This proposal aims at the application of bioinformatics tools (bioinformatics pipelines) in two aspects. On the one hand, it will evaluate the presence of emerging viruses in blood units which are not transfused due to post-donation information hemoderivatives for treatment) and patients with hematopoietic transplantation (patients receiving blood products). In this scenario an important group is represented by the patients with hematopoietic transplantation who may present reactivation of viral infections due to their induced immunosuppression and by the same time can serve as hosts for emerging viruses. To better understand the impact of possible viral infections found in blood products and in patients with hematopoietic transplantation, this work aims at applying an elaborated bioinformatics pipeline for metagenomic data analysis from SNG. It will include steps and software that will extract a maximum quantity of information as possible from the viral infections in the samples. This work will be also supported by bioinformatic researchers from the Pasteur Institute, France and the National Institute of Blood Transfusion of France, France. (AU)