Gene database for Escherichia coli K-12

Commensal in the gut, the Gram-negative rod-shaped <i>Escherichia coli</i> is perhaps the most familiar of the common bacteria that people knows about. Indeed, from a pathogen involved in food poisoning to a biotechnology workhorse producing useful products, the facultative anaerobic <i>E. coli</i> bacterium has received intense research scrutiny into varied aspects of its metabolism and genetic repertoire. Used as a model organism for understanding fundamental biological questions and a microbial chassis for biotechnology purposes, <i>E. coli</i> continues to withhold secrets important to furthering our understanding of biology or developing better biotechnology platforms. This work reports the gene database of <i>E. coli</i> K-12 obtained through parsing the annotated genome sequence of the bacterium from Genbank. Comprising gene name, gene function descriptor, and gene sequence, the gene database of <i>E. coli</i> K-12 should find use in a variety of molecular cloning and genome editing workflows seeking to understand functional genomics or to exploit the rich genetic repertoire of the organism for biotechnology purposes.