Benjamin Bolduc

Research Statement

AI generated · Oct 15, 2026

Benjamin Bolduc's indexed work centers on viral ecology and computational virology, particularly tools for classifying and detecting viruses from metagenomic data. His most-cited first-author contribution, vConTACT, provides a gene-sharing network approach for classifying dsDNA viruses infecting Archaea and Bacteria, and remains widely used. Earlier work applied metagenomics to novel positive-strand RNA viruses in archaea-dominated Yellowstone hot springs, while the iVirus cyberinfrastructure packages these tools and community datasets for broader viral ecology research. More recent first-author work extends this trajectory toward scalable, systematic hierarchical virus taxonomy using machine learning. Beyond these, Bolduc contributed as a middle author to gene-sharing networks for taxonomic assignment of uncultivated prokaryotic virus genomes and to VirSorter2, a multi-classifier approach for detecting diverse DNA and RNA viruses. The latter reflects collaborations with Ahmed A. Zayed and other virome researchers. No software, datasets, grants, or patents beyond these publications are indexed. Read together, the listed works trace a consistent line: building classification and detection infrastructure, then applying it to uncultivated viruses across hot springs, soils, oceans, and the human gut.

Most Cited Works

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

Microbiome2021

1,279Citations

DRAM for distilling microbial metabolism to automate the curation of microbiome function

Michael Shaffer, Mikayla A Borton, Bridget B McGivern, Ahmed A Zayed, Sabina Leanti La Rosa

Research Areas

Bacteriophages and microbial interactionGenomics and Phylogenetic StudiesMicrobial Community Ecology and PhysioloPlant and Fungal Interactions ResearchClimate change and permafrost

Affiliations & Education

Employment

2018–present· now
The Ohio State University(US)
Research Scientist · Microbiology
2015–2018
The Ohio State University(US)
Postdoctoral Researcher · Microbiology

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Sources