<p>When trying to investigate a 16S rRNA dataset, I often identify several dozen/hundred species/families which are found in higher/lower abundances. I then start doing literature searches to see what they could be doing, where they have been observed before etc. </p>

<p>To me this sounds:</p>

<ol>
<li>Really selective, only sampling a few papers for each species.</li>
<li>Limiting, as there is no way to do this fully for tens of species.</li>
<li>Incredibly time consuming.</li>
</ol>

<p>What I'm really looking for is a system which I can put a taxa list into and it'll say "Those ones are all anoxic" or "Those 5 have shown denitrifying ability". I don't know if this could be done with literature mining or where to start this, or if there is a database around in the world which curates data like this...</p>

<p>Any suggestions are appreciated.</p>

<p>On following Neil's advice, and reading some papers I reverted back to <a href='http://img.jgi.doe.gov/cgi-bin/w/main.cgi'>IMG</a> to see what meta-data they collect with their published genomes, and actually, it's quite substantive.</p>

<p>On clicking into the 'Genome Browser' section you get presented with a list of species and some basic data on the sequencing project. But if you navigate to the bottom of the page, there is a selection as such:
<img src='http://i.imgur.com/hINFy6X.png' alt='IMG_Metadata_example' /></p>

<p>This allows you to generate your table with the data you're interested in. A selection as above results in the following output, which can then be exported to excel or tsv format and used however you would like. (Full size available here:<a href='http://i.imgur.com/KjMXRDu.png'>http://i.imgur.com/KjMXRDu.png</a>)</p>

<p><img src='http://i.imgur.com/KjMXRDu.png' alt='enter image description here' /> </p>
