Arvind Varsani

Research Statement

AI generated · 3d ago

Arvind Varsani's research centers on the taxonomy, evolution, and ecology of viruses, with a particular emphasis on plant-infecting single-stranded DNA viruses. His most-cited senior-author work includes the ICTV Geminiviridae taxonomy profile and a pairwise-sequence-comparison revision of Begomovirus taxonomy, which together established sequence-identity thresholds now widely used to delimit geminivirus species. He has extended this framework across other viral families, including the establishment of the genus Cyclovirus and removal of Gyrovirus within the Circoviridae, and has examined the ancient evolutionary history of polyomaviruses and the role of recombination in eukaryotic ssDNA viruses. Beyond taxonomy, Varsani contributed as a co-author to widely used community resources, including SDT, a pairwise-identity-based virus classification tool, and VirSorter2, a multi-classifier approach for detecting diverse DNA and RNA viruses, alongside Darren Patrick Martin and Benjamin Bolduc. His involvement in the MIUViG minimum-information standards for uncultivated virus genomes reflects a sustained commitment to community standards. Across these works, his contributions trace a consistent arc: from defining species boundaries within individual virus families to building the comparative tools and consensus frameworks that let the broader virology community classify and share viral sequence data.

Most Cited Works

SDT: A Virus Classification Tool Based on Pairwise Sequence Alignment and Identity Calculation

Brejnev Muhizi Muhire, Arvind Varsani, Darren Patrick Martin

PLoS ONE2014

1,779Citations

VirSorter2: a multi-classifier, expert-guided approach to detect diverse DNA and RNA viruses

Jiarong Guo, Ben Bolduc, Ahmed A Zayed, Arvind Varsani, Guillermo Dominguez-Huerta, Tom O Delmont, Akbar Adjie Pratama, M Consuelo Gazitúa, Dean Vik, Matthew B Sullivan, Simon Roux

Microbiome

Research Areas

Bacteriophages and microbial interactionPlant Virus Research StudiesPlant and Fungal Interactions ResearchAnimal Virus Infections StudiesVirology and Viral Diseases

Affiliations & Education

Education

1998–2003
University of Cape Town Faculty of Science(ZA)
PhD in Virology · Molecular and Cell Biology
1993–1997
Loughborough University(GB)
BSc in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry · Chemistry

Employment

2016–present· now
Arizona State University(US)

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