Virus discovery: one step beyond

•Efficient responses to viral threats require a integrated multidisciplinary approach.•Several relatively newly formed initiatives focus on effective response management.

Recent advances in the metagenomics field have had huge effects on the identification and characterization of newly emerging viral pathogens. To allow timely and efficient responses to future viral threats, an integrated multidisciplinary approach utilizing expertises in several areas, including clinical assessment, virus surveillance, virus discovery, pathogenesis, and the molecular basis of the host response to infection, is required. It requires the scientific community involved in virus discovery to go one step beyond.