SOP for pathway inference in Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG)

One of the most important aspects of genomic analysis is the prediction of which pathways, both metabolic and non-metabolic, are present in an organism. In IMG, this is carried out by the assignment of IMG terms, which are organized into IMG pathways. Based on manual and automatic assignment of IMG terms, the presence or absence of IMG pathways is automatically inferred. The three categories of pathway assertion are asserted (likely present), not asserted (likely absent), and unknown. In the unknown category, at least one term necessary for the pathway is missing, but an ortholog in another organism has the corresponding term assigned to it. Automatic pathway inference is an important initial step in genome analysis.