PATRIC September 2015 Data and Website Release

Published on 2015-10-01 00:00:00

AMR Metadata

In this release, we have added additional antimicrobial resistance phenotype related metadata for 949 genomes. The AMR panel data was primarily provided by the NIAID Genomic Centers for Infectious Diseases, which was incorporated into PATRIC after a comprehensive manual curation process.

Below is the summary of the top bacterial genera with AMR metadata.

Genus

Number of genomes with AMR metadata

Streptococcus

3210

Mycobacterium

1338

Staphylococcus

620

Klebsiella

259

Acinetobacter

236

Pseudomonas

125

Enterobacter

65

Escherichia

50

All AMR metadata incorporated thus far is available on the FTP site for download. In addition, we have also created a special FTP directory where we have published 11 genus-specific AMR genome sets that contain more than 100 antimicrobial resistant and susceptible genomes for a given antibiotic. The goal of this directory is to provide easy access to the balanced AMR genome sets to users interested in building AMR Classifiers.

Other Metadata Updates

Additional metadata updates include incorporation of additional clinical metadata from the NIAID Genomic Centers for Infectious Diseases; addition of accession numbers for Assembly (6560), BioProject (2440), BioSample (6619), and GenBank (3133); genome name changes (698) to include strain names; and consolidation of some potentially redundant metadata fields.

New PATRIC Genus-specific and Cross-genera Protein Families

We have computed new genus-specific protein families (PLfams) and cross-genera protein families (PGfams) for all the public genomes in PATRIC. These protein families cover almost all of the proteins in the current public genomes (~100% protein coverage) to support more comprehensive comparative analysis.

The protein families are computed using the procedure described below:

  • All the proteins from public genomes currently available in PATRIC are assigned function based on the most recent signature k-mers. For all the proteins with identical functions, a similarity matrix is computed based on the number of signature k-mers they have in common, divided by average protein length for every pair of proteins. This k-mer similarity matrix is then processed using MCL algorithm, which forms one or more protein clusters based on similarity among the members.

    • The genus-specific protein families are computed using only proteins within a genus and more stringent criteria (MCL inflation = 3.0). This provides higher sequence similarity and better specificity while performing within-genus/species or close strain comparisons.

    • The cross-genera protein families are computed by clustering representative proteins from the genus-specific families with slightly relaxed criteria (MCL inflation = 1.1). This allows cross-genera or distant homologs to cluster together, which is necessary to support cross-genera comparative analysis across all microbial genomes.

The new protein families are accessible through the Genome and Gene Overview webpages and through the Protein Family Sorter tool. The Protein Family Sorter now allows users to perform comparative analysis using PLfams, PGfams, or FIGfams.

Annotation Updates

This release features complete functional annotation update of all the public genomes in PATRIC. All the proteins from the public genomes were rerun through the latest version of functional annotation pipeline to assign functions based on the most up-to-date manually curated annotations of the subsystems.

Please note that private genomes annotated by PATRIC users have not received any protein family or function updates. We are currently working on updating the PATRIC annotation service to support the annotation of new protein families and functions. We expect this update to be available in our next release.

All of the data download files on the FTP site that contain PATRIC annotations have been updated to provide the latest annotations.

Website Minor Bug Fixes

This release also features website bug fixes, minor enhancements, and performance improvements. The most notable change in the website functionality is the incorporation of the new protein families (PLfams and PGfams) on the Genomes overview, Gene overview, and Protein Family Sorter webpages.