Megx.net

Megx.net provides integrated access to georeferenced marker genes, environmental data, and marine genome and metagenome projects to support microbial ecological genomics analyses.

Key Features:

• MegDB: Stores sequence data and habitat information alongside global environmental data layers and encompasses several hundreds of prokaryote and phage genomes and metagenomes plus over one million small and large subunit ribosomal RNA sequences.
• Data Curation: Sequence entries adhere to the proposed minimal standards for genomes and metagenomes (MIGS/MIMS) from the Genomic Standards Consortium.
• Genes Mapserver: Visualizes stored data on a world map and enables calculation of statistics describing environmental parameters for spatial analyses.
• Web Services: Provides programmatic access to datasets via Web Services.

Scientific Applications:

• Ecological Genomic Studies: Investigate how microbial species adapt to environmental conditions using integrated genomic and metagenomic datasets.
• Biogeographical Mapping: Study distribution patterns of microbes across geographical regions and correlate those patterns with environmental parameters.
• Environmental Impact Assessments: Assess impacts of environmental changes on microbial communities by analyzing ribosomal RNA sequences alongside habitat data.

Methodology:

Integration of sequence, habitat and global environmental data layers; curation of sequence entries to MIGS/MIMS standards; mapping and visualization via Genes Mapserver with calculation of environmental-parameter statistics; and dataset access through Web Services.