Species-level deconvolution of metagenome assemblies with Hi-C-based contact probability maps.

ABSTRACT: Microbial communities consist of mixed populations of organisms, including unknown species in unknown abundances. These communities are often studied through metagenomic shotgun sequencing, but standard library construction methods remove long-range contiguity information; thus, shotgun sequencing and de novo assembly of a metagenome typically yield a collection of contigs that cannot readily be grouped by species. Methods for generating chromatin-level contact probability maps, e.g., as generated by the Hi-C method, provide a signal of contiguity that is completely intracellular and contains both intrachromosomal and interchromosomal information. Here, we demonstrate how this signal can be exploited to reconstruct the individual genomes of microbial species present within a mixed sample.

SUBMITTER: Burton JN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4455782 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature