Victors: a web-based knowledge base of virulence factors in human and animal pathogens

Virulence factors (VFs) are molecules that allow microbial pathogens to overcome host defense mechanisms and cause disease in a host. It is critical to study VFs for better understanding microbial pathogenesis and host defense mechanisms. Victors (http://www.phidias.us/victors) is a novel, manually curated, web-based integrative knowledge base and analysis resource for VFs of pathogens that cause infectious diseases in human and animals. Currently, Victors contains 5296 VFs obtained via manual annotation from peer-reviewed publications, with 4648, 179, 105 and 364 VFs originating from 51 bacterial, 54 viral, 13 parasitic and 8 fungal species, respectively. Our data analysis identified many VF-specific patterns. Within the global VF pool, cytoplasmic proteins were more common, while adhesins were less common compared to findings on protective vaccine antigens. Many VFs showed homology with host proteins and the human proteins interacting with VFs represented the hubs of human-pathogen interactions. All Victors data are queriable with a user-friendly web interface. The VFs can also be searched by a customized BLAST sequence similarity searching program. These VFs and their interactions with the host are represented in a machine-readable Ontology of Host-Pathogen Interactions. Victors supports the 'One Health' research as a vital source of VFs in human and animal pathogens.