Metagenomics: A viable tool for reconstructing herbivore diet.

ABSTRACT: Metagenomics can generate data on the diet of herbivores, without the need for primer selection and PCR enrichment steps as is necessary in metabarcoding. Metagenomic approaches to diet analysis have remained relatively unexplored, requiring validation of bioinformatic steps. Currently, no metagenomic herbivore diet studies have utilized both chloroplast and nuclear markers as reference sequences for plant identification, which would increase the number of reads that could be taxonomically informative. Here, we explore how in silico simulation of metagenomic data sets resembling sequences obtained from faecal samples can be used to validate taxonomic assignment. Using a known list of sequences to create simulated data sets, we derived reliable identification parameters for taxonomic assign

SUBMITTER: Chua PYS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8518049 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature