Viruses are ubiquitous particles comprising genetic material that can infect bacteria, archaea, and fungi, as well as human and other animal cells. Given that determining virus composition and function in association with states of human health and disease is of increasing interest, we anticipate that the field of viral metagenomics will continue to expand and be applied in a variety of areas ranging from surveillance to discovery and will rely heavily upon the continued development of reference materials and databases. Information regarding viral composition and function readily translates into biological and clinical applications, including the rapid sequence identification of pathogenic viruses in various sample types. However, viral metagenomic approaches often lack appropriate standards and reference materials to enable cross-study comparisons and assess potential biases which can be introduced at the various stages of collection, storage, processing, and sequence analysis. In addition, implementation of appropriate viral reference materials can aid in the benchmarking of current and development of novel assays for virus identification, discovery, and surveillance. As the field of viral metagenomics expands and standardizes, results will continue to translate into diverse applications.

中文翻译：

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人类病毒宏基因组学和参考材料的潜在应用：对当前和未来病毒的考虑。

病毒是无处不在的颗粒，包含可以感染细菌、古细菌、真菌以及人类和其他动物细胞的遗传物质。鉴于人们对确定与人类健康和疾病状态相关的病毒组成和功能越来越感兴趣，我们预计病毒宏基因组学领域将继续扩大并应用于从监测到发现的各个领域，并将严重依赖参考资料和数据库的不断发展。有关病毒组成和功能的信息很容易转化为生物学和临床应用，包括各种样品类型中致病病毒的快速序列鉴定。然而，病毒宏基因组方法通常缺乏适当的标准和参考材料来进行交叉研究比较并评估可能在收集、储存、处理和序列分析的各个阶段引入的潜在偏差。此外，采用适当的病毒参考材料可以帮助对当前病毒识别、发现和监测的新型检测方法进行基准测试和开发。随着病毒宏基因组学领域的扩展和标准化，结果将继续转化为不同的应用。