The goal of the project is to provide a comprehensive bioinformatics resource for these pathogens, including consistently annotated genome, proteome and metabolic pathway data to facilitate research into counter-measures, including drugs, vaccines and diagnostics.

The PATRIC infrastructure consists of a relational database, analytical pipelines and a website which supports browsing, querying, data visualization and the ability to download raw and curated data in standard formats. At present, the site warehouses complete sequences for 17 bacterial and 332 viral genomes.

The PATRIC project includes three primary collaborators: the University of Chicago, the University of Manchester, and New City Media. The University of Chicago is providing genome annotations and a PATRIC end-user genome annotation service using their Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology (RAST) system. The National Centre for Text Mining (NaCTeM) at the University of Manchester is providing literature-based text mining capability and service. New City Media is providing assistance in website interface development.