Gene database of Methanobrevibacter smithii ATCC 35061

The predominant archaeon in the human gut, <i>Methanobrevibacter smithii</i> is a methanogen and hydrogentroph that plays a very important metabolic role in human gut homeostasis. Specifically, <i>M. smithii</i> 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 <i>M. smithii</i> 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 <i>M. smithii</i> to encode important functions in the modern day gut microbiome.