Frequently Asked Questions

The Virus–Human Ion Channel Interaction (VHIC) Database is the first comprehensive database dedicated to both predicted and experimentally supported interactions between viral proteins and human ion channel proteins. It integrates large-scale computational predictions generated using the VPPI-MetaGO framework, along with curated known interactions providing researchers with an accessible resource to explore how viruses may interact with host ion channels. VHIC enables users to search, visualize, and download interaction data across hundreds of human viruses and ion channel proteins, supporting research in virology, host–pathogen interactions, drug discovery, and therapeutic target identification.

VHIC allows researchers to explore virus–human ion channel interactions, search using virus names, viral proteins, UniProt IDs, or human ion channel genes. Visualize interaction networks with probability score and Z score. Identify potential host targets for antiviral drug development and download curated interaction datasets for further computational or experimental analysis.

The current release of VHIC contains over 127,165 predicted virus–human ion channel interactions covering 585 human viruses, 25 viral families, and 322 human ion channel proteins.

Key Features

• Comprehensive search by virus family, virus, strain, and viral protein.
• Human ion channel search using gene name or UniProt ID.
• Predicted interaction probability scores and corresponding Z-scores.
• Interactive virus–human ion channel protein–protein interaction network visualization.
• Direct links to UniProt protein records.
• Identification of experimentally validated interactions (where available) with supporting PubMed references.
• Download search results in TSV, Excel (.xlsx), and JSON formats.
• Advanced filtering by viral family, genome type, virus, strain, protein, and confidence level.

VHIC allows users to retrieve interaction data using both Quick Text Search and Advanced Search. The retrieved results can be downloaded in multiple formats, including TSV, Excel (.xlsx), and JSON, ensuring compatibility with a wide range of downstream bioinformatics analysis, data processing pipelines, and visualization tools.

Prediction scores represent the confidence assigned by the VPPI-MetaGO machine learning framework for each predicted virus–human ion channel interaction. Higher scores indicate greater confidence that the interaction may occur.

The Z-score measures how much a predicted interaction score deviates from the mean prediction score across all predicted virus–human ion channel interactions. A higher positive Z-score indicates that an interaction is substantially stronger than the average prediction and is therefore considered more reliable. In VHIC, Z-scores are used to classify interactions into confidence categories, with higher Z-scores corresponding to higher-confidence predictions that may be prioritized for downstream analysis and experimental validation.

If you use VHIC in your research, please cite both the VHIC Database and the associated publication describing the VPPI-MetaGO framework. Citation details will be updated after publication. Until then, please include the database name, version, URL, and access date in your manuscript.

You can reach the VHIC development team through the Contact page available on this website. We welcome questions, suggestions, bug reports.