MarRef

MarRef provides a curated reference of complete marine prokaryotic genomes to support comparative genomics, metagenomic annotation, and ecological and evolutionary research.

Key Features:

• Complete Genomes: MarRef exclusively contains fully sequenced complete genomes of marine prokaryotes.
• Rich Metadata: Each record includes 106 metadata fields covering sampling, sequencing, assembly, annotation, organism-specific, and taxonomic information.
• Manual Curation: Records are manually curated to enhance data quality and consistency.
• Integration with MMP: Integrated into the Marine Metagenomics Portal (MMP) and linked with MarDB (incomplete genomes) and MarCat (gene catalog).
• BLAST-searchable Sequences: Sequence data are searchable via BLAST against the database to support comparative analyses.

Scientific Applications:

• Comparative Genomics: Enables genome-to-genome comparisons to investigate evolutionary relationships and functional adaptations among marine microorganisms.
• Metagenomic Studies: Provides reference genomes for taxonomic and functional annotation of marine metagenomic datasets.
• Ecological Research: Supports analyses correlating genomic features with environmental metadata to study microbial roles in marine ecosystems.

Methodology:

Records undergo rigorous manual curation with the use of ontologies and controlled vocabularies to ensure consistency and accuracy across the database.