Viruses can reproduce their progenies only within a host cell, and their actions depend both on its destructive tendencies toward a specific host cell and on environmental conditions. Therefore, knowledge of the subcellular localization of viral proteins in a host cell or virus-infected cell is very useful for in-depth studying their functions and mechanisms as well as designing antiviral drugs. Virus-mPLoc has been developed for prediction of the subcellular localization of viral proteins within host and virus-infected cells including those with multiple sites.

Caveat

Application scope: The predictor is for viral protein samples only that covers the following 6 subcellular locations: (1) viral capsid, (2) host cytoplasm, (3) host endoplasmic reticulum, (4) host nucleus, (5) host plasma membrane, and (6) secreted. Stop prediction if the query protein is known not a virus protein or not one of the above 6 locations, because the result obtained might not make any sense.