Hg-MATE-Db.v1.01142021

Microorganisms play a significant role in regulating the form and fate of mercury (Hg) in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Microbes with the hgcAB gene pair can produce a more toxic, and bioaccumulative form of Hg, methylmercury (MeHg). Microbes that possess the mer operon can demethylate and/or reduce Hg species as part of a detoxification mechanism. Improved techniques for capturing hgcAB and mer presence and diversity are necessary for identifying the major microbial players in environmental Hg cycling. The primary goal of the Hg-MATE-Db is to provide an up-to-date collated resource of Hg-cycling genes from pure culture and environmental microbial genomes and meta-omic datasets. The database will be updated regularly.

The Hg-MATE-Db.v1 contains an hgcAB dataset with resources for identifying key microbial producers of the toxin MeHg. Future versions of the Hg-MATE-Db will also include hgcAB sequences from high-throughput sequencing and clone datasets. Future versions will also contain a mer dataset, which will contain resources for identifying genes of the mer-operon that encode for demethylation of organomercurials (merB), reduction of inorganic Hg(II) (merA), as well as operon regulation (merR), and Hg transport across the cell (merTPC).

The latest release, version 1 (v1), was compiled on 23 October 2020 and finalized on 14 January 2021, and contains an hgcAB dataset. The catalogue contains 1053 unique HgcA/B amino acid sequences.

Please cite us when using the Hg-MATE-Db in your work.

Gionfriddo, C., Capo, E., Peterson, B., Lin, H., Jones, D., Bravo, AG., Bertilsson, S., Moreau, J., McMahon, K., Elias, D., and Gilmour, C. (2021). Hg-MATE-Db.v1.01142021. doi:10.25573/serc.13105370