Microorganisms play a vital role in living systems in numerous
ways. In the soil or ocean environment, microbes are
involved in diverse processes, such as carbon and nitrogen
cycle, nutrient recycling, and energy acquisition. The relation
between microbial dysbiosis and disease developments has
been extensively studied. In particular, microbial communities
in the human gut are associated with the pathophysiology
of several chronic diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease
and diabetes. Therefore, analyzing the distribution of microorganisms
and their associations with the environment
is a key step in understanding nature. With the advent of nextgeneration
sequencing technology, a vast amount of metagenomic
data on unculturable microbes in addition to culturable
microbes has been produced. To reconstruct microbial
genomes, several assembly algorithms have been developed
by incorporating metagenomic features, such as uneven
depth. Since it is difficult to reconstruct complete microbial
genomes from metagenomic reads, contig binning approaches
were suggested to collect contigs that originate from the same
genome. To estimate the microbial composition in the environment,
various methods have been developed to classify
individual reads or contigs and profile bacterial proportions.
Since microbial communities affect their hosts and environments
through metabolites, metabolic profiles from metagenomic
or metatranscriptomic data have been estimated.
Here, we provide a comprehensive review of computational methods that can be applied to investigate microbiomes using
metagenomic and metatranscriptomic sequencing data.
The limitations of metagenomic studies and the key approaches
to overcome such problems are discussed.
Citations
Citations to this article as recorded by
A Review of Web-Based Metagenomics Platforms for Analysing Next-Generation Sequence Data Arunmozhi Bharathi Achudhan, Priya Kannan, Annapurna Gupta, Lilly M. Saleena Biochemical Genetics.2024; 62(2): 621. CrossRef
Benchmarking bacterial taxonomic classification using nanopore metagenomics data of several mock communities Alexander Van Uffelen, Andrés Posadas, Nancy H. C. Roosens, Kathleen Marchal, Sigrid C. J. De Keersmaecker, Kevin Vanneste Scientific Data.2024;[Epub] CrossRef
Metagenomic approaches and opportunities in arid soil research Muhammad Riaz Ejaz, Kareem Badr, Zahoor Ul Hassan, Roda Al-Thani, Samir Jaoua Science of The Total Environment.2024; 953: 176173. CrossRef
DeepCheck: multitask learning aids in assessing microbial genome quality Guo Wei, Nannan Wu, Kunyang Zhao, Sihai Yang, Long Wang, Yan Liu Briefings in Bioinformatics.2024;[Epub] CrossRef
Integrated multi-omics analyses of microbial communities: a review of the current state and future directions Muzaffer Arıkan, Thilo Muth Molecular Omics.2023; 19(8): 607. CrossRef
Selenium Metabolism and Selenoproteins in Prokaryotes: A Bioinformatics Perspective Yan Zhang, Jiao Jin, Biyan Huang, Huimin Ying, Jie He, Liang Jiang Biomolecules.2022; 12(7): 917. CrossRef
Advances in experimental and computational methodologies for the study of microbial-surface interactions at different omics levels Juan José González-Plaza, Cristina Furlan, Tomaž Rijavec, Aleš Lapanje, Rocío Barros, Juan Antonio Tamayo-Ramos, Maria Suarez-Diez Frontiers in Microbiology.2022;[Epub] CrossRef
Efficient and Quality-Optimized Metagenomic Pipeline Designed for Taxonomic Classification in Routine Microbiological Clinical Tests Sylvie Buffet-Bataillon, Guillaume Rizk, Vincent Cattoir, Mohamed Sassi, Vincent Thibault, Jennifer Del Giudice, Jean-Pierre Gangneux Microorganisms.2022; 10(4): 711. CrossRef
Establishment and Validation of a New Analysis Strategy for the Study of Plant Endophytic Microorganisms Feng Chen, Xianjin Wang, Guiping Qiu, Haida Liu, Yingquan Tan, Beijiu Cheng, Guomin Han International Journal of Molecular Sciences.2022; 23(22): 14223. CrossRef
Novel technologies to characterize and engineer the microbiome in inflammatory bowel disease Alba Boix-Amorós, Hilary Monaco, Elisa Sambataro, Jose C. Clemente Gut Microbes.2022;[Epub] CrossRef
Current Understanding on the Genetic Basis of Key Metabolic Disorders: A Review Kenneth Francis Rodrigues, Wilson Thau Lym Yong, Md. Safiul Alam Bhuiyan, Shafiquzzaman Siddiquee, Muhammad Dawood Shah, Balu Alagar Venmathi Maran Biology.2022; 11(9): 1308. CrossRef
Omics-based microbiome analysis in microbial ecology: from sequences to information Jang-Cheon Cho Journal of Microbiology.2021; 59(3): 229. CrossRef