Dear Colleagues,

Viruses can spread very quickly, something humanity has been convinced of many times - and again in 2019, when the SARS-CoV-2 virus struck and spread rapidly around the world, causing the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. Statistical modeling, though speculative, estimates that there may be over a hundred thousand different viruses, only about 200 of which have been reliably linked to human infections. Although the number of known pathogens has grown steadily over the decades, new viral infections such as SARS, Ebola, MERS, Zika and the recent COVID-19 outbreak have also increased in recent years.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a combination of technologies that allow large numbers of genomic fragments to be read simultaneously with high accuracy and reliability to the point where their incorporation into routine medical practice is no longer considered something extravagant. The idea of using NGS to identify viral pathogens was proposed about 10 years ago, shortly after the advent of sequencing techniques, and the concept rapidly gained momentum as technology evolved. Currently, the use of NGS to study viral diversity is clearly one of the most promising approaches, as evidenced by the active use of this method in similar projects in recent years. Researchers primarily use metagenomic sequencing, as it is a powerful tool for detecting the entire spectrum of viruses. However, in recent years, approaches, both experimental and bioinformatic, have been actively developed to enhance the capabilities of NGS sequencing in the detection of viruses.

The purpose of this special issue is to provoke a discussion aimed at integrating knowledge and to present a variety of methods and approaches to meet the challenge of finding and identifying viral pathogens in biological material using NGS sequencing and original bioinformatic approaches.

I look forward to your contributions.

Dr. Kamil Khafizov
Guest Editor

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• viruses
• NGS
• bioinformatics
• diagnostics
• sequencing
• viral infections
• metagenomics