The Integrated Microbial Genome (IMG) family systems

As the genomic community is rapidly moving towards the generation of complete and draft sequences for several hundred organisms, it is becoming evident that the single most important tool for interpreting the newly sequenced genomes is an effective integration and analysis of existing genomic sequence data on a comparative level. The success of the comparative analysis is directly dependent on the efficiency of integration, which in turn will be determined by the phylogenetic diversity of the organisms, the quality of their annotations, and the level of detail in cellular reconstructions. The IMG systems aim to accommodate such an integration in order to facilitate and support a comparative analysis of sequenced genomes and metagenomes and to generate their metabolic and cellular reconstructions

IMG's Mission

The key mission of the Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG) system is to provide a data management platform that supports comprehensive analysis and annotation of all publicly available genomes in a comparative genomics context.

Through quarterly releases, IMG aims at providing high levels of

• genome diversity, in terms of the number of genomes integrated into the system from public resources, based on the fundamental principle that the value of genome analysis increases with the number of genomes available as a context for comparative analysis.

• data quality, in terms of the coherence of annotations, the use of sound validation and correction procedures, as well as corroboration of annotations from other public microbial genome data resources.

• annotation coverage, in terms of the breadth of the functional annotations, based on techniques that follow observed biological evolutionary phenomena regarding functional coupling of genes.

IMG: http://img.jgi.doe.gov/

IMG/M: http://img.jgi.doe.gov/m

IMG-ER: http://img/jgi.doe.gov/er

IMG-EDU: http://img.jgi.doe.gov/edu

IMG's Launch 

March 1st, 2005

The development of the IMG systems is a collaboration between the Genome Biology Program (GBP) and the JGI and the Biological Data Management and Technology Center (BDMTC) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory