Welcome to InfPred
InfPred is a machine learning based tool to predict the zoonotic host tropism of the Influenza A virus with the help of its protein sequences, stating whether a viral strain has the potential to infect human hosts. This was developed to help prioritize high-risk viral strains for future research, aid the study of emergence or the risk a novel influenza virus possesses if it acquires the capability to spread human to human, thereby being useful for pandemic preparedness, disease surveillance if integrated with early warning systems, capacity-building activities, and determining the overall public-health impact.
About the website
Infectious diseases have shaped human civilization throughout history causing massive economic fallout, affecting urban activity, livelihood, and mortality. These diseases have had the potential to cause biological disasters like epidemics, pandemics and one of the leading causes for this is Zoonosis.
The viruses can affect various hosts by jumping species, called reservoirs, and causing disease outbreaks. Some of them, can even affect humans and cause epidemics or pandemics as the strains may have the potential to overcome species barriers and infect humans, get adapted in such a way that it could spread human-to-human, leading to a potential pandemic, which is a cause of great concern.
InfPred will be able to take a query sequence or a dataset of sequences of Influenza A proteins in .fasta format, and the respective protein model has to be selected by the user. The model will predict the zoonotic host, stating if it will infect humans or not, in the form of an output file in .csv format.
About The Influenza A
Influenza A virus, occurring naturally among wild aquatic birds like geese, swans, is responsible for causing avian influenza in birds, including domestic poultry, animals, and humans, although sporadically. Influenza A, being highly contagious, is one of the most infectious disease challenges worldwide, responsible for seasonal flu as well as pandemic flu, which is rare but simultaneously possible, known to cause four pandemics in recent history.
The seasonal flu is recurring in nature, causing minor impacts as some people have immunity from previous exposures, vaccines are readily available, although obese, diabetic patients, pregnant women, children, elderly, and patients with chronic medical conditions are among the high-risk individuals. On the other hand, the pandemic flu is rare but has significant impacts, as people have little to no immunity from them, which increases the risk for vulnerable and healthy people.
The non-human viruses undergo changes so that they become capable of infecting humans and spreading efficiently and sustainably. In other words, mutations in amino acid residues can alter the receptor-binding site and specificity, altering receptor preference.