Gene database of Methanobrevibacter smithii ATCC 35061

The predominant archaeon in the human gut, Methanobrevibacter
smithii is a methanogen and hydrogentroph that plays a very important
metabolic role in human gut homeostasis. Specifically, M. smithii helps
digest complex polysaccharides in the human diet. But, it plays perhaps a more
important role in enabling the conversion of hydrogen produced by other members
of the gut microbiota into methane through reaction with carbon dioxide. This
helps improve the extraction of energy in bacterial fermentations through
generation of more oxidized end products. This work sought to provide
foundational information of the genetic repertoire of M. smithii ATCC
35061 by parsing its annotated genome sequence downloaded from Genbank.
Comprising gene name, gene function and gene sequence, the resource should find
use in a variety of molecular cloning work seeking to exploit the
biotechnological potential of the bacterium particularly with respect to
hydrogentrophy. But, the dataset should also inform fundamental studies into how
evolution affords the streamlined genome of M. smithii to encode
important functions in the modern day gut microbiome.