Swapping Metagenomics Preprocessing Pipeline Components Offers Speed and Sensitivity Increases
George Armstrong, Cameron Martino, Justin Morris, Behnam Khaleghi, Jaeyoung Kang, Jeff DeReus, Qiyun Zhu, Daniel Roush, Daniel McDonald, Antonio Gonazlez, Justin P. Shaffer, Carolina S. Carpenter, Mehrbod Estaki, Stephen Wandro, Sean Eilert, Ameen Akel, Justin Eno, Ken Curewitz, Austin D. Swafford, Niema Moshiri, Tajana Rosing, Rob Knight
Abstract
In shotgun metagenomics studies that seek to relate changes in microbial DNA across samples, processing the data on a computer often takes longer than obtaining the data from the sequencing instrument. Recently developed software packages that perform individual steps in the pipeline of data processing in principle offer speed advantages, but in practice they may contain pitfalls that prevent their use, for example, they may make approximations that introduce unacceptable errors in the data. Here, we show that differences in choices of these components can speed up overall data processing by 5-fold or more on the same hardware while maintaining a high degree of correctness, greatly reducing the time taken to interpret results. This is an important step for using the data in clinical settings, where the time taken to obtain the results may be critical for guiding treatment.