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      Functional assignment of metagenomic data: challenges and applications

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          Abstract

          Metagenomic sequencing provides a unique opportunity to explore earth’s limitless environments harboring scores of yet unknown and mostly unculturable microbes and other organisms. Functional analysis of the metagenomic data plays a central role in projects aiming to explore the most essential questions in microbiology, namely ‘In a given environment, among the microbes present, what are they doing, and how are they doing it?’ Toward this goal, several large-scale metagenomic projects have recently been conducted or are currently underway. Functional analysis of metagenomic data mainly suffers from the vast amount of data generated in these projects. The shear amount of data requires much computational time and storage space. These problems are compounded by other factors potentially affecting the functional analysis, including, sample preparation, sequencing method and average genome size of the metagenomic samples. In addition, the read-lengths generated during sequencing influence sequence assembly, gene prediction and subsequently the functional analysis. The level of confidence for functional predictions increases with increasing read-length. Usually, the most reliable functional annotations for metagenomic sequences are achieved using homology-based approaches against publicly available reference sequence databases. Here, we present an overview of the current state of functional analysis of metagenomic sequence data, bottlenecks frequently encountered and possible solutions in light of currently available resources and tools. Finally, we provide some examples of applications from recent metagenomic studies which have been successfully conducted in spite of the known difficulties.

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          Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology

          Genomic sequencing has made it clear that a large fraction of the genes specifying the core biological functions are shared by all eukaryotes. Knowledge of the biological role of such shared proteins in one organism can often be transferred to other organisms. The goal of the Gene Ontology Consortium is to produce a dynamic, controlled vocabulary that can be applied to all eukaryotes even as knowledge of gene and protein roles in cells is accumulating and changing. To this end, three independent ontologies accessible on the World-Wide Web (http://www.geneontology.org) are being constructed: biological process, molecular function and cellular component.
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            Community structure and metabolism through reconstruction of microbial genomes from the environment.

            Microbial communities are vital in the functioning of all ecosystems; however, most microorganisms are uncultivated, and their roles in natural systems are unclear. Here, using random shotgun sequencing of DNA from a natural acidophilic biofilm, we report reconstruction of near-complete genomes of Leptospirillum group II and Ferroplasma type II, and partial recovery of three other genomes. This was possible because the biofilm was dominated by a small number of species populations and the frequency of genomic rearrangements and gene insertions or deletions was relatively low. Because each sequence read came from a different individual, we could determine that single-nucleotide polymorphisms are the predominant form of heterogeneity at the strain level. The Leptospirillum group II genome had remarkably few nucleotide polymorphisms, despite the existence of low-abundance variants. The Ferroplasma type II genome seems to be a composite from three ancestral strains that have undergone homologous recombination to form a large population of mosaic genomes. Analysis of the gene complement for each organism revealed the pathways for carbon and nitrogen fixation and energy generation, and provided insights into survival strategies in an extreme environment.
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              Comparative metagenomics of microbial communities.

              The species complexity of microbial communities and challenges in culturing representative isolates make it difficult to obtain assembled genomes. Here we characterize and compare the metabolic capabilities of terrestrial and marine microbial communities using largely unassembled sequence data obtained by shotgun sequencing DNA isolated from the various environments. Quantitative gene content analysis reveals habitat-specific fingerprints that reflect known characteristics of the sampled environments. The identification of environment-specific genes through a gene-centric comparative analysis presents new opportunities for interpreting and diagnosing environments.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Brief Bioinform
                Brief. Bioinformatics
                bib
                bib
                Briefings in Bioinformatics
                Oxford University Press
                1467-5463
                1477-4054
                November 2012
                6 July 2012
                6 July 2012
                : 13
                : 6 , Special Issue: Bioinformatics approaches and tools for metagenomic analysis
                : 711-727
                Author notes
                Corresponding author. Todd D. Taylor, Laboratory for MetaSystems Research, Quantitative Biology Center, Riken, Yokohama, Kanagawa 230-0045, Japan. Tel.: +81-45-503-9285; Fax: +81-45-503-9176; E-mail: taylor@ 123456riken.jp
                Article
                bbs033
                10.1093/bib/bbs033
                3504928
                22772835
                24405388-ac7c-45cc-900e-1653a8f556b8
                © The Author(s) 2012. Published by Oxford University Press.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 5 March 2012
                : 26 May 2012
                Page count
                Pages: 17
                Categories
                Papers

                Bioinformatics & Computational biology
                functional annotation,metagenomics,next-generation sequencing,pathway-mapping,comparative analysis,bioinformatics

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