Metagenomic species profiling using universal phylogenetic marker genes.

Sunagawa, Shinichi; Mende, Daniel R; Zeller, Georg; Izquierdo-Carrasco, Fernando; Berger, Simon A; Kultima, Jens Roat; Coelho, Luis Pedro; Arumugam, Manimozhiyan et al. · Nat Methods · 2013

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Abstract

To quantify known and unknown microorganisms at species-level resolution using shotgun sequencing data, we developed a method that establishes metagenomic operational taxonomic units (mOTUs) based on single-copy phylogenetic marker genes. Applied to 252 human fecal samples, the method revealed that on average 43% of the species abundance and 58% of the richness cannot be captured by current reference genome-based methods. An implementation of the method is available at http://www.bork.embl.de/software/mOTU/.

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