WALNUT CREEK, CA, USA (OBBeC) The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) has released an upgraded version of the IMG/M metagenome data management and analysis system.

Developed by the DOE JGI in conjunction with a number of other acclaimed institutions, IMG/M provides tools for analyzing the functional capability of microbial communities based on their metagenome DNA sequence in the context of reference isolate genomes. The new version of IMG/M includes five additional metagenome datasets generated from microbial community samples that were the subject of published studies.

IMG/M contains all isolate genomes of version 2.4 of DOE JGI’s Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG) system, plus a number of additional genomes, bringing the total number of isolate genomes available to 2,953.

 

 

Additionally, IMG/M provides new tools for analyzing metagenome datasets in the context of reference isolate genomes, such as the Reference Genome Context Viewer and Protein Recruitment Plot that allow the examination of metagenomes in the context of individual reference isolate genomes. New Abundance Comparison and Functional Category Comparison tools enable pairwise function analysis (COG, Pfam, Enzyme, TIGRfam) and functional category (e.g., COG category) abundance comparisons, respectively, between a metagenome dataset and one or several reference metagenomes or genomes, and test whether the differences in abundance are statistically significant.

Availability:
IMG/M is freely accessible and can be obtained by visiting the DOE JGI website.

>> http://img.jgi.doe.gov/m