New Publication by Chengsheng Zhu and others

fusionDB: assessing microbial diversity and environmental preferences via functional similarity networks Zhu Chengsheng, Mahlich Yannick, Miller Maximilian, Bromberg Yana; fusionDB: assessing microbial diversity and environmental preferences via functional similarity networks, Nucleic Acids Research, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkx1060

We describe fusionDB, a novel database that uses our functional data to represent 1374 taxonomically distinct bacteria annotated with available metadata: habitat/niche, preferred temperature, and oxygen use. Each microbe is encoded as a set of functions represented by its proteome and individual microbes are connected via common functions. Users can search fusionDB via combinations of organism names and metadata. Moreover, the web interface allows mapping new microbial genomes to the functional spectrum of reference bacteria, rendering interactive similarity networks that highlight shared functionality. fusionDB provides a fast means of comparing microbes, identifying potential horizontal gene transfer events, and highlighting key environment-specific functionality.