PLATE: a global atlas of food metaplasmidomes

PLATE is a curated global atlas of food metaplasmidomes built from 4,690 food metagenomes across 55 countries, cataloging 3,904,895 putative plasmid contigs.

• Why it matters: Shotgun metagenomics has expanded food microbiome studies, but plasmid diversity in these ecosystems remains largely uncharacterized, limiting trait and gene-flow analyses.
• What they did: The resource compiles a broad and refined catalog (bPLATE and rPLATE) of plasmid contigs, with curated metadata, host predictions, taxonomic assignments, and functional annotations including AMR and KEGG orthologs.
• The result: A case study shows AMR genes detected on PPCs from food microbiomes, and the atlas enables interactive search and download to support analyses of food metaplasmidomes.

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