AUTHOR=Garber Arkadiy I. , Nealson Kenneth H. , Okamoto Akihiro , McAllister Sean M. , Chan Clara S. , Barco Roman A. , Merino Nancy TITLE=FeGenie: A Comprehensive Tool for the Identification of Iron Genes and Iron Gene Neighborhoods in Genome and Metagenome Assemblies JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology VOLUME=11 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00037 DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2020.00037 ISSN=1664-302X ABSTRACT=
Iron is a micronutrient for nearly all life on Earth. It can be used as an electron donor and electron acceptor by iron-oxidizing and iron-reducing microorganisms and is used in a variety of biological processes, including photosynthesis and respiration. While it is the fourth most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust, iron is often limiting for growth in oxic environments because it is readily oxidized and precipitated. Much of our understanding of how microorganisms compete for and utilize iron is based on laboratory experiments. However, the advent of next-generation sequencing and surge in publicly available sequence data has made it possible to probe the structure and function of microbial communities in the environment. To bridge the gap between our understanding of iron acquisition, iron redox cycling, iron storage, and magnetosome formation in model microorganisms and the plethora of sequence data available from environmental studies, we have created a comprehensive database of hidden Markov models (HMMs) based on genes related to iron acquisition, storage, and reduction/oxidation in