Cited by 192Genomics and Phylogenetic StudiesGut microbiota and healthMicrobial Community Ecology and Physiology

Deriving accurate microbiota profiles from human samples with low bacterial content through post-sequencing processing of Illumina MiSeq data

Open access
Jervis-Bardy, Jake, Leong, Lex E X, Marri, Shashikanth, Smith, Renee J, Choo, Jocelyn M, Smith-Vaughan, Heidi C, Nosworthy, Elizabeth, Morris, Peter S +3 more·2015·Microbiome

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The rapid expansion of 16S rRNA gene sequencing in challenging clinical contexts has resulted in a growing body of literature of variable quality. To a large extent, this is due to a failure to address spurious signal that is characteristic of samples with low levels of bacteria and high levels of non-bacterial DNA. We have developed a workflow based on the paired-end read Illumina MiSeq-based approach, which enables significant improvement in data quality, post-sequencing. We demonstrate the efficacy of this methodology through its application to paediatric upper-respiratory samples from several anatomical sites. RESULTS: A workflow for processing sequence data was developed based on commonly available tools. Data generated from different sample types showed a marked variation in levels of non-bacterial signal and 'contaminant' bacterial reads. Significant differences in the ability of reference databases to accurately assign identity to operational taxonomic units (OTU) were observed. Three OTU-picking strategies were trialled as follows: de novo, open-reference and closed-reference, with open-reference performing substantially better. Relative abundance of OTUs identified as potential reagent contamination showed a strong inverse correlation with amplicon concentration allowing their objective removal. The removal of the spurious signal showed the greatest improvement in sample types typically containing low levels of bacteria and high levels of human DNA. A substantial impact of pre-filtering data and spurious signal removal was demonstrated by principal coordinate and co-occurrence analysis. For example, analysis of taxon co-occurrence in adenoid swab and middle ear fluid samples indicated that failure to remove the spurious signal resulted in the inclusion of six out of eleven bacterial genera that accounted for 80% of similarity between the sample types. CONCLUSIONS: The application of the presented workflow to a set of challenging clinical samples demonstrates its utility in removing the spurious signal from the dataset, allowing clinical insight to be derived from what would otherwise be highly misleading output. While other approaches could potentially achieve similar improvements, the methodology employed here represents an accessible means to exclude the signal from contamination and other artefacts.

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  • Sequences from contaminants generally have frequencies inversely correlated with sample analyte concentration.

    “Additional putative external contamination was identified on the basis that sequences from contaminants generally have frequencies that are inversely correlated with sample analyte concentration16,38.”
  • All OTUs were tested for correlation between proportional abundance and post-PCR amplicon concentration, and OTUs with a significant negative correlation were considered contaminants and removed.

    “As an additional quality control step, all OTUs were tested for correlations between the proportional abundance of the OTU and the post-PCR amplicon concentration of a sample using the method developed by Jervis-Brady et al. [90] as implemented in the contam_test program for R (https://github.com/eclarke/eclectic).”

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1 of the 25 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. [17]The National Center for Biotechnology Information Sequence Read Archive. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/ (accessed 011014)
  2. [25]The National Center for Biotechnology Information Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi (accessed 011014)

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Authors
Jervis-Bardy, J., Leong, L. E. X., Marri, S., Smith, R. J., Choo, J. M., Smith-Vaughan, H. C., Nosworthy, E., Morris, P. S., O’Leary, S., Rogers, G. B., & Marsh, R. L.
Affiliations
  • Flinders University (AU)
  • South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (AU)
  • Charles Darwin University (AU)
  • The University of Melbourne (AU)
Corresponding author
Jervis-Bardy, Jake
Venue
Microbiome
Published
2015-05-05
Volume
3
Issue
1
Pages
19-19
ISSN
2049-2618 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2063276097
Cited by
192
References
25
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 3
FWCI
9.27
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Microbiome (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S) (University of Adelaide) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Griffith Research Online (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Medical Research Council
  • National Health and Medical Research Council (1007641)
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, microbiota profiling, reagent contamination, operational taxonomic units, paired-end reads, middle ear fluid, reference database

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