MetaboAnalyst’s enrichment analysis module allows users to test whether their metabolites of interest are enriched in metabolism associated with specific biological contexts. To enable gut-microbiome-specific interpretation, we generated a metabolite set that reflects the metabolic potential of bacteria typically found in the human gut based on KEGG pathways.
A list of common human gut bacteria was assembled using a multi-source ecological curation workflow, including AGORA v1 (all representing human gut microbes) and published literature such as the Unified Human Gut Genome Catalog and the Human Microbiome Project Consortium. This curated list contains 1,465 unique species represented by 2,111 strain-level entries, which was matched to KEGG at the species level, yielding 753 distinct species corresponding to 1,946 organism entries in KEGG. KEGG metabolic pathways associated with these organisms were retrieved and consolidated into a unified pathway set representing the collective metabolic capabilities of human gut bacteria, enabling microbiome-specific metabolite enrichment analysis within MetaboAnalyst.