title: Automated and Accurate Estimation of Gene Family Abundance from Shotgun Metagenomes.
abstract: Shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing is a widely applicable tool for characterizing the functions that are encoded by microbial communities. Several bioinformatic tools can be used to functionally annotate metagenomes, allowing researchers to draw inferences about the functional potential of the community and to identify putative functional biomarkers. However, little is known about how decisions made during annotation affect the reliability of the results. Here, we use statistical simulations to rigorously assess how to optimize annotation accuracy and speed, given parameters of the input data like read length and library size. We identify best practices in metagenome annotation and use them to guide the development of the Shotgun Metagenome Annotation Pipeline (ShotMAP). ShotMAP is an analytically flexible, end-to-end annotation pipeline that can be implemented either on a local computer or a cloud compute cluster. We use ShotMAP to assess how different annotation databases impact the interpretation of how marine metagenome and metatranscriptome functional capacity changes across seasons. We also apply ShotMAP to data obtained from a clinical microbiome investigation of inflammatory bowel disease. This analysis finds that gut microbiota collected from Crohn's disease patients are functionally distinct from gut microbiota collected from either ulcerative colitis patients or healthy controls, with differential abundance of metabolic pathways related to host-microbiome interactions that may serve as putative biomarkers of disease.
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nayfach
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Patrick H
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Bradley
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Stacia K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Wyman
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Timothy J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Laurent
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolution and Ecology, Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, UC Davis Genome Center, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jonathan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Eisen
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, United States of America.|Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Institute for Human Genetics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Katherine S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Pollard
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, United States of America.|Department of Microbiology, Department of Statistics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States of America.
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Sharpton
mesh_terms: D002874:Chromosome Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003424:Crohn Disease / Q000382:microbiology; D005819:Genetic Markers / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D054892:Metagenome / Q000235:genetics*; D056186:Metagenomics / Q000379:methods*; D064307:Microbiota / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic
chemical_list: D005819:Genetic Markers