A Knowledge-Based Framework For Microbial Pathway Genomics

The aim of Microme is to facilitate the large-scale automated reconstruction of microbial metabolism by providing an infrastructure for the integration of a curated repository of reference pathways and reactions, genome-scale constraint-based models, and downstream applications in comparative genomics and biotechnology. The output of these downstream applications will be fed-back into the curation process, enhancing the quality of the reference pathways and models. Although many prior endeavours have already been undertaken in all of these areas, the absence of a well-engineered, coherent framework to support their interaction has proven a fundamental obstacle to the development of high-throughput, pathway-aware systems for automatic genome annotation.  By linking these components in a coherent fashion, Microme aims at advancing beyond the state of the art at a time when the explosion of genome-scale sequencing makes such progress a necessity if the growing wealth of data thus produced is to be understood and exploited.

Microme is a 14 partners project funded by the Framework 7 programme of the European Commission.