Basic Info

Based on the characteristics of bacterial sequences, virulence-related genes in the genome are identified

More Details

A bacterial pathogen is typically characterized as any bacterium possessing the capacity to induce disease, and this capacity is referred to as pathogenicity.

Virulence offers a quantitative assessment of a bacterium's pathogenicity or its propensity to cause disease.

Virulence factors encompass the attributes (such as gene products) that empower a microorganism to colonize or invade a host of a specific species, thereby augmenting its potential to induce disease. These factors encompass bacterial toxins, cell surface proteins facilitating bacterial adherence, protective cell surface carbohydrates and proteins, and hydrolytic enzymes that may contribute to the bacterium's pathogenicity.

What's New

The Virulence Factor Database (VFDB) serves as an extensive and cohesive online platform for curating and disseminating information about virulence factors (VFs) associated with bacterial pathogens.

VFDB offers comprehensive coverage of the key virulence factors of well-characterized bacterial pathogens, detailing their structural features, functions, and mechanisms employed by these pathogens to colonize new environments, evade host defenses, and induce disease.

VFDB provides researchers with contemporary understanding of the diverse mechanisms utilized by bacterial pathogens, enabling them to unravel the pathogenic mechanisms underlying less well-characterized bacterial diseases and to devise novel, rational strategies for the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases.

Currently, our analytical pipeline supports the analysis and identification of virulence factors for the following 39 types of bacteria.

Additional Information

Related links:

http://www.mgc.ac.cn/VFs/main.htm

Literature

Liu B, Zheng D, Zhou S, Chen L, Yang J. VFDB 2022: a general classification scheme for bacterial virulence factors. Nucleic Acids Res. 2022;50(D1):D912-D917. doi:10.1093/nar/gkab1107