Enteropathway: the metabolic pathway database for the human gut microbiota

Brief Bioinform. 2024 Jul 25;25(5):bbae419. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbae419.

Abstract

The human gut microbiota produces diverse, extensive metabolites that have the potential to affect host physiology. Despite significant efforts to identify metabolic pathways for producing these microbial metabolites, a comprehensive metabolic pathway database for the human gut microbiota is still lacking. Here, we present Enteropathway, a metabolic pathway database that integrates 3269 compounds, 3677 reactions, and 876 modules that were obtained from 1012 manually curated scientific literature. Notably, 698 modules of these modules are new entries and cannot be found in any other databases. The database is accessible from a web application (https://enteropathway.org) that offers a metabolic diagram for graphical visualization of metabolic pathways, a customization interface, and an enrichment analysis feature for highlighting enriched modules on the metabolic diagram. Overall, Enteropathway is a comprehensive reference database that can complement widely used databases, and a tool for visual and statistical analysis in human gut microbiota studies and was designed to help researchers pinpoint new insights into the complex interplay between microbiota and host metabolism.

Keywords: human gut microbiota; microbial metabolic pathway database; visualization tool.

MeSH terms

  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Databases, Factual*
  • Gastrointestinal Microbiome*
  • Humans
  • Metabolic Networks and Pathways*
  • Software