MarFERReT, an open-source, version-controlled reference library of marine microbial eukaryote functional genes.

Area of Science:

• Marine biology
• Genomics
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• Metatranscriptomics yields vast sequence data from natural environments.
• Accurate taxonomic annotation relies on comprehensive reference sequences.
• Marine microbial eukaryotes present challenges due to limited genomic data and library update difficulties, hindering transcript analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Marine Functional EukaRyotic Reference Taxa (MarFERReT) database.
• To enhance the taxonomic annotation of eukaryotic metatranscriptomes.
• To provide a curated and updated reference library for marine microbial eukaryotes.

Main Methods:

• Compiled 902 publicly available marine eukaryote genomes and transcriptomes.
• Assessed sequence quality and cross-contamination.
• Selected 800 validated entries for the MarFERReT database.

Main Results:

• MarFERReT v1.1 includes 800 marine eukaryotic genomes/transcriptomes.
• The library covers 453 species/strain-level taxa.
• It contains ~28 million protein sequences with NCBI/PR2 Taxonomy and Pfam annotations.

Conclusions:

• MarFERReT significantly improves taxonomic assignment for marine eukaryotic metatranscriptomes.
• The database addresses limitations in current reference libraries.
• Associated resources facilitate database implementation and updates.