First Survey of Publicly Available Metagenomic Sequencing Data Across 24 Middle Eastern and North African Countries: The MENA Microbiome Database (opens in new tab)

Microbiome research has expanded globally, yet the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remains severely under-represented in international sequencing repositories. Here we present the MENA Microbiome Database, the first systematically harmonized catalog of publicly available metagenomic sequencing data from 24 MENA countries, consolidating 60,126 runs across 51,365 biological samples and 2,373 BioProjects deposited between 2008 and 2026. Records were retrieved from ENA, NCBI SRA, and P...