MarineMetagenomeDB

MarineMetagenomeDB provides standardized, manually curated metadata for 11,449 marine metagenomes from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) and MG-RAST to support marine microbiome meta-analyses and comparative studies.

Key Features:

• Curated metadata: Manually curated and standardized metadata for 11,449 marine metagenomes.
• Metadata classes: Seventeen metadata classes including biome, material, oceanic zone, geographic feature, and oceanographic phenomena.
• Sample attributes: Standardized sample attributes such as salinity, depth, latitude and longitude, sequencing platform, and sequence count.
• Data sources: Aggregated sample metadata sourced from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) and MG-RAST.
• Geographic and biome coverage: Samples span all oceans and multiple seas with approximately 40% categorized as the 'ocean' biome and over 55% collected from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
• Sequencing technology distribution: Sequencing platform metadata indicates 84.33% of samples were generated using Illumina technology.

Scientific Applications:

• Meta-analyses: Enables large-scale meta-analyses of marine microbial communities using standardized metadata.
• Comparative studies: Supports comparative analyses across biomes, oceanic zones, and geographic features.
• Microbial ecology and microbiology: Facilitates studies in microbial ecology and marine microbiology, including microbial biogeography.
• Targeted sample selection: Supports selection of specific sample sets, for example estuarine metagenomes for biogeography studies.

Methodology:

Metadata were manually curated and standardized across 17 classes for 11,449 marine metagenomes aggregated from SRA and MG-RAST.