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MetaGEAR

MetaGEAR Explorer

MetaGEAR Explorer is a web application and REST API for interrogating curated catalogs of microbial genes. BLAST a sequence, browse by Pfam domain, or explore Metagenomic Species Pangenomes — and see where matches show up across published microbiome cohorts in seconds.

It’s a free hosted service. No software to install, no local setup.

→ Open MetaGEAR Explorer ↗

What’s indexed

  • 33M+ gene families across all cohorts
  • 24 uniformly-processed metagenomic cohorts: IBD, colorectal cancer, healthy controls
  • 9,053 stool samples
  • 13,795 species pangenomes with gene catalogs

What you can do with it

Search by sequence. Paste a nucleotide or protein sequence and run BLAST against the cohort-wide gene catalogs. Get hits ranked by identity and coverage, with the cohort, sample, and contig of origin attached to each.

Search by domain. Look up a Pfam domain (e.g. PF08020) and see every gene in the curated catalog that contains it, grouped by cohort and annotation.

Explore MSPs. Browse curated Metagenomic Species Pangenomes — see all the genes in a species pangenome, with cohort and sample provenance attached.

Trace back to samples. Every result links back to the cohort and sample metadata so you can judge biological relevance, not just sequence similarity.

Methods and citation

Methods and validation are described across multiple publications — see the Cite & contact page for the right reference depending on what you used.

Where to go next