biostudies-literatureMing ZOpen Foundation of Key Laboratory of Tropical Translational Medicine of Ministry of Education, Hainan Medical UniversityScientific Research Foundation of Hangzhou City UniversityNational Key R&amp;D Program of ChinaNational Key R&D Program of ChinaZhejiang Provincial Key Research and Development Program of ChinaKey R & D projects in Zibo cityZhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under GrantKey R &amp; D projects in Zibo city455https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC10691023biostudies-literatureUnknown24(1)<h4>Background</h4>The escalation of viruses over the past decade has highlighted the need to determine their respective hosts, particularly for emerging ones that pose a potential menace to the welfare of both human and animal life. Yet, the traditional means of ascertaining the host range of viruses, which involves field surveillance and laboratory experiments, is a laborious and demanding undertaking. A computational tool with the capability to reliably predict host ranges for novel viruses can provide timely responses in the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases. The intricate nature of viral-host prediction involves issues such as data imbalance and deficiency. Therefore, developing highly accurate computational tools capable of predicting virus-host associations is aBMC bioinformaticsHostNet: improved sequence representation in deep neural networks for virus-host prediction.PMC106910232021C011642020kj100011No. LQ23F020002No. 2022YFC23027002021TTM010No. X-202212Liu HXia HWu MWang SChen XYuan ZMing ZfalseHostNet: improved sequence representation in deep neural networks for virus-host prediction.<h4>Background</h4>The escalation of viruses over the past decade has highlighted the need to determine their respective hosts, particularly for emerging ones that pose a potential menace to the welfare of both human and animal life. Yet, the traditional means of ascertaining the host range of viruses, which involves field surveillance and laboratory experiments, is a laborious and demanding undertaking. A computational tool with the capability to reliably predict host ranges for novel viruses can provide timely responses in the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases. The intricate nature of viral-host prediction involves issues such as data imbalance and deficiency. Therefore, developing highly accurate computational tools capable of predicting virus-host associations is a2023-01-01T00:00:00Z2023 Dec2026-06-03T08:05:54.848Z2025-02-19T04:23:56.077ZS-EPMC106910233804107110.1186/s12859-023-05582-9