More ranting to myself than anything, but others might find it useful

The “VMR” is described as

“The current Virus Metadata Resource (VMR) that provides a list of all exemplar viruses can be downloaded from the link below.”

Most of it is and is really useful … apart from the accessions that don’t point to phages and are for bacterial genomes – without warning or indication :

“Bartogtaviriformidae Bartonegtaviriform Bartonegtaviriform andersoni E Bartonella gene transfer agent BaGTA BX897699 Partial genome dsDNA bacteria “

with accession BX897699 pointing to the genome of a GTA in Bartonella … why GTAs are classified as viruses is slightly confusing (but heyho, argument for another day)

But all these accessions point to bacterial genomes ..

BX897699.1Bartonella henselae strain Houston-1, complete genome: 1931047bp

CP001357.1 Brachyspira hyodysenteriae WA1, complete genome: 3000694bp

CP001312.1 Rhodobacter capsulatus SB 1003, complete genome: 3738958bp
CP000830.1 Dinoroseobacter shibae DFL 12, complete genome: 3789584b

CP000031.2 Ruegeria pomeroyi DSS-3, complete genome: 4109437bp

CP015418.1 Rhodovulum sulfidophilum DSM 1374, complete genome: 4132586bp

If you were trying to use the VMR to automatically extract all representative viral genomes that infect bacteria … then there is need to check they are actually the bacteriophages (or GTAs!) and not the entirely bacterial genome