Frontiers in Microbiology (Mar 2025)
FACdb: a comprehensive resource for genes, gut microbiota, and metabolites in farm animals
Abstract
Farm animals, including livestock and poultry, play essential economic, social, and cultural roles and are indispensable in human welfare. Farm Animal Connectome database (FACdb) is a comprehensive resource that includes the association networks among gene expression, gut microbiota, and metabolites in farm animals. Although some databases present the relationship between gut microbes, metabolites, and gene expression, these databases are limited to human and mouse species, with limited data for farm animals. In this database, we calculate the associations and summarize the connections among gene expression, gut microbiota, and metabolites in farm animals using six correlation or distance calculation (including Pearson, Spearman, Cosine, Euclidean, Bray–Curtis, and Mahalanobis). FACdb contains over 55 million potential interactions of 73,571 genes, 11,046 gut microbiota, and 4,540 metabolites. It provides an easy-to-use interface for browsing and searching the association information. Additionally, FACdb offers interactive visualization tools to effectively investigate the relationship among the genes, gut microbiota, and metabolites in farm animals. Overall, FACdb is a valuable resource for understanding interactions among gut microbiota, metabolites, and gene expression. It contributes to the further utilization of microbes in animal products and welfare promotion. Compared to mice, pigs or other farm animals share more similarities with humans in molecular, cellular, and organ-level responses, indicating that our database may offer new insights into the relationship among gut microbiota, metabolites, and gene expression in humans.
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