# Predicting Influenza A Viral Host Using PSSM and Word Embeddings

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.01140 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01140/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jan 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.3781/) (2013)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid mutation of the influenza virus threatens public health. Reassortment among viruses with different hosts can lead to a fatal pandemic. However, it is difficult to detect the original host of the virus during or after an outbreak as influenza viruses can circulate between different species. Therefore, early and rapid detection of the viral host would help reduce the further spread of the virus. We use various machine learning models with features derived from the position-specific scoring matrix (PSSM) and features learned from word embedding and word encoding to infer the origin host of viruses. The results show that the performance of the PSSM-based model reaches the MCC around 95%, and the F1 around 96%. The MCC obtained using the model with word embedding is around 96%, and the F1 is around 97%.