Seeking advice on identifying HHV8 sequences in scRNA-seq data

Question

[Arta]

I'm working on an scRNA-seq project for a client and I've been asked to identify sequences confirming the presence of human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8) in a subset of samples from the experiment. The client has informed me that the virus has been independently confirmed to be present in these samples, although I don't have any more information about how this was done.

I'm familiar with using Seurat for basic scRNA-seq analysis, but I'm not sure how to specifically identify and quantify HHV8 sequences in the data. I would really appreciate any advice or resources that you can provide on this topic.

• Can a reference genome be used to identify HHV8 sequences in scRNA-seq data?
• Are there any tools or pipelines specifically designed for identifying viral sequences in scRNA-seq data?
• Are there any papers or case studies that have used scRNA-seq to confirm the presence of HHV8 in a sample?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!