Unraveling the functional dark matter through global metagenomics.

ABSTRACT: Metagenomes encode an enormous diversity of proteins, reflecting a multiplicity of functions and activities^1,2. Exploration of this vast sequence space has been limited to a comparative analysis against reference microbial genomes and protein families derived from those genomes. Here, to examine the scale of yet untapped functional diversity beyond what is currently possible through the lens of reference genomes, we develop a computational approach to generate reference-free protein families from the sequence space in metagenomes. We analyse 26,931 metagenomes and identify 1.17 billion protein sequences longer than 35 amino acids with no similarity to any sequences from 102,491 reference genomes or the Pfam database³. Using massively parallel graph-based clustering, w

SUBMITTER: Pavlopoulos GA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10584684 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature