NBC: the Naive Bayes Classification tool webserver for taxonomic classification of metagenomic reads.
BACKGROUND
Datasets from high-throughput sequencing technologies have yielded a vast amount of data about organisms in environmental samples. Yet, it is still a challenge to assess the exact organism content in these samples because the task of taxonomic classification is too computationally complex to annotate all reads in a dataset. An easy-to-use webserver is needed to process these reads. While many methods exist, only a few are publicly available on webservers, and out of those, most do not annotate all reads.


RESULTS
We introduce a webserver that implements the naïve Bayes classifier (NBC) to classify all metagenomic reads to their best taxonomic match. Results indicate that NBC can assign next-generation sequencing reads to their taxonomic classification and can find significant populations of genera that other classifiers may miss.


BACKGROUND
Publicly available at: http://nbc.ece.drexel.edu.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA. gailr@ece.drexel.edu
Gail L
GL
Rosen
Erin R
ER
Reichenberger
Aaron M
AM
Rosenfeld
D000465:Algorithms; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D020407:Internet; D056186:Metagenomics / Q000379:methods*; D010802:Phylogeny; D012984:Software