METAnnotatorX2: a Comprehensive Tool for Deep and Shallow Metagenomic Data Set Analyses
Christian Milani, Gabriele Andrea Lugli, Federico Fontana, Leonardo Mancabelli, Giulia Alessandri, Giulia Longhi, Rosaria Anzalone, Alice Viappiani, Francesca Turroni, Douwe van Sinderen, Marco Ventura
Abstract
We developed a novel tool, i.e., METAnnotatorX2, that includes a number of new advanced features for analysis of deep and shallow metagenomic data sets and is accompanied by (regularly updated) customized databases for archaea, bacteria, fungi, protists, and viruses. Both software and databases were developed so as to maximize sensitivity and specificity while including support for shallow metagenomic data sets. Through extensive tests performed on Illumina and Nanopore artificial data sets, we demonstrated the high performance of the software to not only extract taxonomic and functional information from sequence reads but also to assemble and process genomes from metagenomic data. The robustness of these functionalities was validated using "real-life" data sets obtained from Illumina and Nanopore sequencing of biological samples. Furthermore, the performance of METAnnotatorX2 was compared to other available software tools for analysis of shotgun metagenomics data.