Communications Biology (Feb 2022)

BugSplit enables genome-resolved metagenomics through highly accurate taxonomic binning of metagenomic assemblies

  • Induja Chandrakumar,
  • Nick P. G. Gauthier,
  • Cassidy Nelson,
  • Michael B. Bonsall,
  • Kerstin Locher,
  • Marthe Charles,
  • Clayton MacDonald,
  • Mel Krajden,
  • Amee R. Manges,
  • Samuel D. Chorlton

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03114-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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A new computational method, BugSplit, teases out individual species’ genomes from metagenomic samples. The authors show that BugSplit is able to identify the presence of a novel coronavirus in COVID-19 patients using a database from 2019 predating the pandemic and can separate host and pathogen sequences in other clinical samples with much higher specificity and accuracy than competing tools.