China launches microbiome data platform

BEIJING -- Chinese researchers have developed an online platform for the data management, analysis, and release of microbial genomics and microbiome, according to the website of Chinese Academy of Sciences on Tuesday.

The Global Catalogue of Metagenomics (gcMeta) is a part of the "Chinese Academy of Sciences Initiative of Microbiome (CAS-CMI)", which focuses on studying the human and environmental microbiome, establishing depositories of samples, strains, and data, as well as promoting international collaboration.

The platform supplies the management, analysis, and publication services for microbiome related data. Users can upload the raw data and their metadata into the system via a web submission interface or a data upload web application.

As of August 2018, gcMeta has archived a total of 3,053 studies and 124,052 samples, hosting more than 120 TB of sequencing data.

The gcMeta serves as a data catalog for the CAS-CMI project and other ongoing projects in China. There are now more than 2,000 samples from these projects so far.