MicrobiomeNet (https://microbiomenet.com) is a web-based platform developed to provide functional insights into microbiome signatures using genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs). It currently hosts 12,400 GEMs and around 6 million microbial signatures. Users can start by searching microbes, metabolites, genes, or enzymes, and perform common tasks such as to characterize the metabolic capacity for a given microbe, to explore known microbial associations, as well as to understand potential metabolic interactions. This book chapter provides practical, step-by-step instructions for navigating MicrobiomeNet to obtain functional insights into individual microbes or microbial association networks. © 2026 The Author(s). Current Protocols published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. Basic Protocol 1: Characterizing the Metabolic Profile of a Microbe of Interest Basic Protocol 2: Elucidating Metabolic Interactions from Microbial Associations Basic Protocol 3: Analyzing Carbohydrate-Utilization Pathways to Explain Co-Responsive Taxa Basic Protocol 4: Identifying Novel Deoxycholic Acid-Producing Gut Microbes Basic Protocol 5: Assessing the Faecalibacterium prausnitzii-Coprococcus Relationship.
Lu et al. (Sun,) studied this question.