Assessing viral taxonomic composition in benthic marine ecosystems: reliability and efficiency of different bioinformatic tools for viral metagenomic analyses.

ABSTRACT: In benthic deep-sea ecosystems, which represent the largest biome on Earth, viruses have a recognised key ecological role, but their diversity is still largely unknown. Identifying the taxonomic composition of viruses is crucial for understanding virus-host interactions, their role in food web functioning and evolutionary processes. Here, we compared the performance of various bioinformatic tools (BLAST, MG-RAST, NBC, VMGAP, MetaVir, VIROME) for analysing the viral taxonomic composition in simulated viromes and viral metagenomes from different benthic deep-sea ecosystems. The analyses of simulated viromes indicate that all the BLAST tools, followed by MetaVir and VMGAP, are more reliable in the affiliation of viral sequences and strains. When analysing the environmental viromes, tBLASTx, M

SUBMITTER: Tangherlini M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4916513 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature