Cited by 474Genomics and Phylogenetic StudiesGut microbiota and healthMicrobial Community Ecology and Physiology

Evaluating the Information Content of Shallow Shotgun Metagenomics

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Hillmann, Benjamin, Al-Ghalith, Gabriel A., Shields-Cutler, Robin R., Zhu, Qiyun, Gohl, Daryl M., Beckman, Kenneth B., Knight, Rob, Knights, Dan·2018·mSystems

Abstract

A common refrain in recent microbiome-related academic meetings is that the field needs to move away from broad taxonomic surveys using 16S sequencing and toward more powerful longitudinal studies using shotgun sequencing. However, performing deep shotgun sequencing in large longitudinal studies remains prohibitively expensive for all but the most well-funded research labs and consortia, which leads many researchers to choose 16S sequencing for large studies, followed by deep shotgun sequencing on a subset of targeted samples. Here, we show that shallow- or moderate-depth shotgun sequencing may be used by researchers to obtain species-level taxonomic and functional data at approximately the same cost as amplicon sequencing. While shallow shotgun sequencing is not intended to replace deep shotgun sequencing for strain-level characterization, we recommend that microbiome scientists consider using shallow shotgun sequencing instead of 16S sequencing for large-scale human microbiome studies.

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Authors
Hillmann, B., Al-Ghalith, G. A., Shields-Cutler, R. R., Zhu, Q., Gohl, D. M., Beckman, K. B., Knight, R., & Knights, D.
Affiliations
  • University of Minnesota (US)
  • Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
  • Biotechnology Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
  • University of California San Diego (US)
Corresponding author
Knights, Dan
Venue
mSystems
Published
2018-10-30
Volume
3
Issue
6
ISSN
2379-5077 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2951076599
Cited by
474
References
26
Citations by year
2026: 52 · 2025: 66 · 2024: 57 · 2023: 61 · 2022: 60 · 2021: 82 · 2020: 68 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 2 · 2015: 1
FWCI
15.65
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • mSystems (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
HHS | National Institutes of Health (R01AI121383, P01DK078669)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Gut microbiota and health
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
Keywords
16S rRNA gene sequencing, functional metagenomics, amplicon sequencing

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