Editing Virology (section)

===Sequencing of viral genomes===
{{Main|DNA sequencing}}
As most viruses are too small to be seen by a light microscope, sequencing is one of the main tools in virology to identify and study the virus. Traditional Sanger sequencing and next-generation sequencing (NGS) are used to sequence viruses in basic and clinical research, as well as for the diagnosis of emerging viral infections, molecular epidemiology of viral pathogens, and drug-resistance testing. There are more than 2.3 million unique viral sequences in GenBank.<ref name=":0" /> NGS has surpassed traditional Sanger as the most popular approach for generating viral genomes.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last1=Castro |first1=Christina |last2=Marine |first2=Rachel |last3=Ramos |first3=Edward |last4=Ng |first4=Terry Fei Fan |title=The effect of variant interference on de novo assembly for viral deep sequencing |journal=BMC Genomics |pages=421 |doi=10.1186/s12864-020-06801-w |date=22 June 2020 |volume=21 |issue=1 |pmid=32571214 |pmc=7306937 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Viral genome sequencing as become a central method in viral [[epidemiology]] and [[virus classification|viral classification]].