To Dereplicate or Not To Dereplicate?

ABSTRACT Metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) expand our understanding of microbial diversity, evolution, and ecology. Concerns have been raised on how sequencing, assembly, binning, and quality assessment tools may result in MAGs that do not reflect single populations in nature. Here, we reflect on...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Jacob T. Evans, Vincent J. Denef
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: American Society for Microbiology 2020
Materias:
MAG
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/59970f89bc9b44a7abe2121e3000f68c
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:ABSTRACT Metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) expand our understanding of microbial diversity, evolution, and ecology. Concerns have been raised on how sequencing, assembly, binning, and quality assessment tools may result in MAGs that do not reflect single populations in nature. Here, we reflect on another issue, i.e., how to handle highly similar MAGs assembled from independent data sets. Obtaining multiple genomic representatives for a species is highly valuable, as it allows for population genomic analyses; however, when retaining genomes of closely related populations, it complicates MAG quality assessment and abundance inferences. We show that (i) published data sets contain a large fraction of MAGs sharing >99% average nucleotide identity, (ii) different software packages and parameters used to resolve this redundancy remove very different numbers of MAGs, and (iii) the removal of closely related genomes leads to losses of population-specific auxiliary genes. Finally, we highlight some approaches that can infer strain-specific dynamics across a sample series without dereplication.