CAnDi: a global catalogue of anaerobic digestion microbiomes.

CAnDi compiles 36 480 prokaryotic genomes from 1256 anaerobic digestion metagenomic samples, spanning 11 149 species and enabling large-scale virome and plasmid discovery.

• Why it matters: Anaerobic digestion communities underpin methane and carbon dioxide formation, but existing databases underrepresent bacteriophages and plasmids, limiting functional and taxonomic interpretation.
• What they did: The authors built CAnDi from worldwide bioreactor metagenomes, reconstructing metagenomes that encode ~1.9 million viral and over 130 000 plasmid sequences, then clustered identities to infer ~536 000 candidate viral species and 15 000+ unique plasmids.
• The result: De novo protein clustering produced 1 721 182 viral and 123 813 plasmid protein families, with 85% of candidate viral species novel, expanding resources to study virome and plasmidome roles in methane-producing ecosystems.

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