NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute has released an updated microbial genomics resource for researchers that now includes reference genomes and metagenomic data, JGI said Tuesday.
The Integrated Microbial Genomes system with Microbiomes (IMG/M) 2.8 contains tools for analysis of microbial communities based on their metagenome sequence, within the context of reference isolate genomes.
The IMG/M system contains data generated from 65 microbial community samples that are part of 20 metagenome studies, out of which 19 are new samples and six are new studies, JGI said.
These organisms include bacteria, archaea, eukarya, plasmids, viruses, and microbiomes.
New samples in the database include eight Yellowstone hot pool microbial communities, seven marine planktonic communities from Hawaii, a bioreactor wastewater community sample, and an endophytic microbiome from rice. It also includes airborne samples from an indoor urban environment, an acid mine drainage biofilm sample, two human distal gut samples, and five obese and lean mouse gut samples.
JGI also said that it has extended its user interface to improve functionality and usability with new features including a new pathway collection, missing enzymes, genome statistics of microbiome details, and new find functions.