Literature Review

Metagenomic tools analyze microbiomes from sequencing data, which makes them useful in biological research to detect pathogens, study antimicrobial resistance, and predict illnesses, among others. Although not yet used in clinical settings, many researchers have developed models that can process metagenomic data with increasing efficacy [].

Selective amplification (e.g. 16S, 18S, ITS) of specific regions of microbial genomes have been widely used in metagenomics studies, but they introduce bias and omit elements during analysis [3]. Shotgun sequencing is thus becoming a more reliable way to study microbiomes for a variety of tasks:

  • Classification

  • Abundance estimation

  • Identification

Classification

Several methods can classify sequences of a sample into taxa:

  • Alignment of sequences

  • Composition with k-mer analysis

  • Phylogenetics using models of sequence evolution

GPU Acceleration

References

[1]

Alexander Fritz, Patrick Hofmann, Stefan Majda, Elisabeth Dahms, Helene Marie Draese, Till R Lesker, Peter Belmann, Matthew Z DeMaere, Aaron E Darling, Alexander Sczyrba, Andreas Bremges, and Alice C McHardy. Camisim: simulating metagenomes and microbial communities. Microbiome, 7(1):17, 2019. URL: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-019-0633-6, doi:10.1186/s40168-019-0633-6.

[2]

Dirk Hackenberger, Hamna Imtiaz, Amogelang R. Raphenya, Brian P. Alcock, Hendrik N. Poinar, Gerard D. Wright, and Andrew G. McArthur. Carpdm: cost-effective antibiotic resistome profiling of metagenomic samples using targeted enrichment. bioRxiv, 2024. URL: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/03/30/2024.03.27.587061, arXiv:https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/03/30/2024.03.27.587061.full.pdf, doi:10.1101/2024.03.27.587061.

[3]

Alison B.R. McIntyre, Rachid Ounit, Ebrahim Afshinnekoo, and others. Comprehensive benchmarking and ensemble approaches for metagenomic classifiers. Genome Biology, 18(1):182, 2017. URL: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-017-1299-7, doi:10.1186/s13059-017-1299-7.