FIG 1.

Viromics is now optimized for studying dsDNA viruses in nature. Enabled by an optimized sample-to-sequence pipeline (4) and analytical advances (6, 13, 14), databases and tools (16, 17), and quantitative viromes and virome-enabled techniques (12) are now revealing significant new biological information for natural viral communities (13, 19, 20) and ecological context for newly isolated and genome-sequenced (7–9) or virome-determined viruses (10). POV, Pacific Ocean viromes; OMZs, oxygen minimum zone.