KEGG Mapper for inferring cellular functions from protein sequences

Abstract

KEGG is a reference knowledge base for biological interpretation of large-scale molecular datasets, such as genome and metagenome sequences. It accumulates experimental knowledge about high-level functions of the cell and the organism represented in terms of KEGG molecular networks, including KEGG pathway maps, BRITE hierarchies, and KEGG modules. By the process called KEGG mapping, a set of protein coding genes in the genome, for example, can be converted to KEGG molecular networks enabling interpretation of cellular functions and other high-level features. Here we report a new version of KEGG Mapper, a suite of KEGG mapping tools available at the KEGG website (https://www.kegg.jp/ or https://www.genome.jp/kegg/), together with the KOALA family tools for automatic assignment of KO (KEGG Orthology) identifiers used in the mapping.