IMG Mission
The Joint Genome Institute (JGI) is currently producing about 22% of the reported number of bacterial genome projects worldwide, based on information in the Genomes On Line Database.
The key mission of the Integrated Microbial Genomes (IMG) system is to provide a data management platform that supports comprehensive analysis and annotation of all publicly available genomes in a comparative genomics context.
Through quarterly releases, IMG aims at providing high levels of
- genome diversity, in terms of the number of genomes integrated
into the system from public resources, based on the fundamental
principle that the value of genome analysis increases with the number
of genomes available as a context for comparative analysis.
- data quality, in terms of the coherence of annotations, the
use of sound validation and correction procedures, as well as
corroboration of annotations from other public microbial genome data
resources.
- annotation coverage, in terms of the breadth of the functional annotations, based on techniques that follow observed biological evolutionary phenomena regarding functional coupling of genes.
Overall, IMG aims to provide a high level of system and data comprehensibility, in terms of documentation and clarity regarding data and structural and operational semantics, and eventually to contribute to the common goal of improving the overall quality of microbial genome data for the scientific community.