title: IFIM: a database of integrated fitness information for microbial genes.
abstract: Knowledge of an organism's fitness for survival is important for a complete understanding of microbial genetics and effective drug design. Current essential gene databases provide only binary essentiality data from genome-wide experiments. We therefore developed a new database that Integrates quantitative Fitness Information for Microbial genes (IFIM). The IFIM database currently contains data from 16 experiments and 2186 theoretical predictions. The highly significant correlation between the experiment-derived fitness data and our computational simulations demonstrated that the computer-generated predictions were often as reliable as the experimental data. The data in IFIM can be accessed easily, and the interface allows users to browse through the gene fitness information that it contains. IFIM is the first resource that allows easy access to fitness data of microbial genes. We believe this database will contribute to a better understanding of microbial genetics and will be useful in designing drugs to resist microbial pathogens, especially when experimental data are unavailable. Database URL: http://cefg.uestc.edu.cn/ifim/ or http://cefg.cn/ifim/
authors.affiliation: Center of Bioinformatics and Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Wen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Center of Bioinformatics and Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Yuan-Nong
authors.initials: YN
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: Center of Bioinformatics and Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Sen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Center of Bioinformatics and Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Yan-Yan
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: Center of Bioinformatics and Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Center of Bioinformatics and Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China fbguo@uestc.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Feng-Biao
authors.initials: FB
authors.lastname: Guo
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology; D003625:Data Collection; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D018628:Gene Dosage; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D064351:Genes, Microbial; D056084:Genetic Fitness; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface