Title
Metaref: A Pan-Genomic Database For Comparative And Community Microbial Genomics
Abstract
Microbial genome sequencing is one of the longest-standing areas of biological database development, but high-throughput, low-cost technologies have increased its throughput to an unprecedented number of new genomes per year. Several thousand microbial genomes are now available, necessitating new approaches to organizing information on gene function, phylogeny and microbial taxonomy to facilitate downstream biological interpretation. MetaRef, available at http://metaref.org, is a novel online resource systematically cataloguing a comprehensive pan-genome of all microbial clades with sequenced isolates. It organizes currently available draft and finished bacterial and archaeal genomes into quality-controlled clades, reports all core and pan gene families at multiple levels in the resulting taxonomy, and it annotates families' conservation, phylogeny and consensus functional information. MetaRef also provides a comprehensive non-redundant reference gene catalogue for metagenomic studies, including the abundance and prevalence of all gene families in the >700 shotgun metagenomic samples of the Human Microbiome Project. This constitutes a systematic mapping of clade-specific microbial functions within the healthy human microbiome across multiple body sites and can be used as reference for identifying potential functional biomarkers in disease-associate microbiomes. MetaRef provides all information both as an online browsable resource and as downloadable sequences and tabular data files that can be used for subsequent offline studies.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1093/nar/gkt1078
NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH
Keywords
Field
DocType
internet,genomics,phylogeny,archaea,metagenomics,bacteria
Genome,Human Microbiome Project,Biology,Microbiome,Biological database,Genomics,Metagenomics,Genetics,Human microbiome,Microbial Taxonomy
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
42
D1
0305-1048
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.47
14
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Katherine Huang1152.18
Arthur Brady21036.38
Anup Mahurkar3394.60
Owen White438983.22
Dirk Gevers5845.31
Curtis Huttenhower643830.18
Nicola Segata723424.61