Use Case 3: Metagenomic Analysis

This type of analysis starts with DNA sequencing data in the form of sequencing reads, typically stored in FASTQ files, which contain both nucleotide sequences and their per-base quality scores. In metagenomics, these reads originate from a mixture of multiple organisms present in a single sample, such as environmental, clinical, or host-associated communities.

Workflow Overview

Optional assembly → Binning / Profiling → Functional analysis
FASTQ → Contigs (FASTA) → MAGs / Taxonomic & functional profiles

Key Concepts

Why Metagenomics?

Because no single reference genome can adequately represent all organisms in a mixed sample, metagenomic analyses often rely on de novo approaches to reconstruct genomic fragments from the sequencing reads. Depending on the research question, reads may be:

• Assembled into contigs
• Analyzed directly without full assembly

Binning

Following assembly, contigs can be grouped into bins, each representing a putative genome or taxonomic unit. This process, known as binning, uses:

• Sequence composition (e.g., GC content, tetranucleotide frequencies)
• Coverage patterns
• Similarity to known genomes

The resulting bins are commonly referred to as metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs).

Profiling

In addition to genome reconstruction, metagenomic workflows frequently include:

• Taxonomic profiling - Estimates which organisms are present in the sample
• Functional profiling - Identifies metabolic pathways or gene functions encoded by the community

These analyses allow researchers to characterize both the composition and functional potential of complex microbial ecosystems.

Applications

Metagenomic analysis is widely used to study microbial communities in environments where cultivation of individual organisms is difficult or impossible.

Typical applications include:

• Microbiome research (gut, skin, environmental)
• Environmental monitoring
• Pathogen discovery
• Investigation of community-level responses to environmental or experimental changes

Popular Tools

Assembly & Binning

• MEGAHIT - Fast metagenomic assembler
• MetaSPAdes - SPAdes for metagenomes
• MetaBAT2 - Binning tool
• MaxBin2 - Automated binning
• CheckM - Assess MAG quality

Taxonomic Profiling

• Kraken2 - Fast taxonomic classification
• MetaPhlAn - Marker-based profiling
• Bracken - Species abundance estimation

Functional Profiling

• HUMAnN - Functional profiling
• DIAMOND - Fast protein alignment
• eggNOG-mapper - Functional annotation

Code Example: Metagenomic Analysis Workflow

Click to expand Bash workflow

#!/bin/bash
# Metagenomic analysis workflow

# Step 1: Quality control
fastqc metagenome_R1.fastq.gz metagenome_R2.fastq.gz -o qc_results/

# Step 2: Remove host contamination (if applicable)
# Map reads to host genome and extract unmapped reads
bowtie2 -x host_genome_index \
    -1 metagenome_R1.fastq.gz \
    -2 metagenome_R2.fastq.gz \
    --un-conc-gz clean_reads.fastq.gz \
    -S host_mapped.sam

# Step 3: Taxonomic profiling with Kraken2
kraken2 --db minikraken2_v2 \
    --paired clean_reads_1.fastq.gz clean_reads_2.fastq.gz \
    --threads 16 \
    --report kraken_report.txt \
    --output kraken_output.txt

# Generate visualization with Bracken
bracken -d minikraken2_v2 \
    -i kraken_report.txt \
    -o bracken_species.txt \
    -r 150 \
    -l S

# Step 4: Metagenomic assembly
megahit -1 clean_reads_1.fastq.gz \
    -2 clean_reads_2.fastq.gz \
    -o assembly_output \
    --min-contig-len 1000 \
    -t 16

# Step 5: Binning - map reads back to assembly
bowtie2-build assembly_output/final.contigs.fa assembly_index
bowtie2 -x assembly_index \
    -1 clean_reads_1.fastq.gz \
    -2 clean_reads_2.fastq.gz \
    -S mapped_reads.sam \
    --threads 16

# Convert to BAM and sort
samtools view -bS mapped_reads.sam | samtools sort -o mapped_reads.sorted.bam
samtools index mapped_reads.sorted.bam

# Bin contigs using MetaBAT2
metabat2 -i assembly_output/final.contigs.fa \
    -a mapped_reads.sorted.bam \
    -o bins/bin \
    -t 16 \
    -m 1500

# Step 6: Assess MAG quality with CheckM
checkm lineage_wf bins/ checkm_output/ \
    -x fa \
    -t 16 \
    --tab_table \
    -f checkm_results.txt

# Step 7: Functional profiling with HUMAnN
humann --input clean_reads_1.fastq.gz \
    --output humann_output \
    --threads 16

echo "Metagenomic analysis complete!"

Python Example: Taxonomic Profile Analysis

Click to expand Python script

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
Analyze and visualize Kraken taxonomic profile
"""

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from collections import defaultdict

def parse_kraken_report(report_file):
    """
    Parse Kraken2 report file
    
    Args:
        report_file: Path to Kraken report
        
    Returns:
        DataFrame with taxonomic information
    """
    columns = ['percentage', 'reads_clade', 'reads_taxon', 'rank', 'taxid', 'name']
    df = pd.read_csv(report_file, sep='\t', names=columns)
    
    # Clean up name column (remove leading spaces)
    df['name'] = df['name'].str.strip()
    
    return df

def summarize_taxonomy(df, rank='S', top_n=10):
    """
    Summarize taxonomy at specific rank
    
    Args:
        df: Kraken report DataFrame
        rank: Taxonomic rank (S=species, G=genus, F=family, etc.)
        top_n: Number of top taxa to return
        
    Returns:
        DataFrame with top taxa
    """
    # Filter by rank
    rank_df = df[df['rank'] == rank].copy()
    
    # Sort by percentage
    rank_df = rank_df.sort_values('percentage', ascending=False)
    
    # Get top N
    top_taxa = rank_df.head(top_n)
    
    return top_taxa[['name', 'percentage', 'reads_clade']]

def plot_taxonomic_composition(df, rank='S', top_n=10, output_file='taxonomy_plot.png'):
    """
    Create bar plot of taxonomic composition
    
    Args:
        df: Kraken report DataFrame
        rank: Taxonomic rank
        top_n: Number of top taxa to plot
        output_file: Output file path
    """
    top_taxa = summarize_taxonomy(df, rank, top_n)
    
    fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(12, 6))
    ax.barh(top_taxa['name'], top_taxa['percentage'])
    ax.set_xlabel('Percentage of Reads (%)')
    ax.set_ylabel('Organism')
    ax.set_title(f'Top {top_n} Most Abundant Taxa (Rank: {rank})')
    ax.invert_yaxis()
    
    plt.tight_layout()
    plt.savefig(output_file, dpi=300)
    print(f"Plot saved to {output_file}")

def calculate_diversity_metrics(df, rank='S'):
    """
    Calculate alpha diversity metrics
    
    Args:
        df: Kraken report DataFrame
        rank: Taxonomic rank
    """
    rank_df = df[df['rank'] == rank]
    
    # Shannon diversity
    proportions = rank_df['reads_clade'] / rank_df['reads_clade'].sum()
    proportions = proportions[proportions > 0]  # Remove zeros
    shannon = -sum(proportions * np.log(proportions))
    
    # Species richness
    richness = len(rank_df[rank_df['reads_clade'] > 0])
    
    print(f"\nDiversity Metrics (Rank: {rank}):")
    print(f"Species Richness: {richness}")
    print(f"Shannon Diversity: {shannon:.3f}")

# Usage example
if __name__ == '__main__':
    import numpy as np
    
    # Parse Kraken report
    df = parse_kraken_report('kraken_report.txt')
    
    # Print summary at species level
    print("Top 10 Most Abundant Species:")
    print(summarize_taxonomy(df, rank='S', top_n=10))
    
    # Calculate diversity
    calculate_diversity_metrics(df, rank='S')
    
    # Create visualization
    plot_taxonomic_composition(df, rank='S', top_n=15)

R Example: Functional Pathway Analysis

Click to expand R script

#!/usr/bin/env Rscript
# Analyze HUMAnN functional profiles

library(tidyverse)

# Read HUMAnN pathway abundance file
pathways <- read_tsv("humann_output/pathways_abundance.tsv")

# Clean column names
colnames(pathways) <- gsub("_Abundance", "", colnames(pathways))

# Calculate summary statistics
pathway_summary <- pathways %>%
  summarise(
    total_pathways = n(),
    mean_abundance = mean(`sample_name`, na.rm = TRUE),
    sd_abundance = sd(`sample_name`, na.rm = TRUE)
  )

print(pathway_summary)

# Plot top pathways
top_pathways <- pathways %>%
  arrange(desc(`sample_name`)) %>%
  head(20)

ggplot(top_pathways, aes(x = reorder(`# Pathway`, `sample_name`), y = `sample_name`)) +
  geom_col(fill = "#0065BD") +
  coord_flip() +
  labs(
    title = "Top 20 Metabolic Pathways",
    x = "Pathway",
    y = "Relative Abundance"
  ) +
  theme_minimal()

ggsave("top_pathways.png", width = 12, height = 8, dpi = 300)

Expected Outputs

A comprehensive metagenomic analysis produces:

• Taxonomic profile - Species abundance table and visualization
• MAGs (Metagenome-Assembled Genomes) - Individual genome bins
• Quality reports - CheckM completeness and contamination scores
• Functional profile - Pathway abundance and gene family counts
• Diversity metrics - Alpha and beta diversity measures

Interpreting Results

Metric	Good MAG	Medium MAG	Poor MAG
Completeness	>90%	50-90%	<50%
Contamination	<5%	5-10%	>10%
Quality score	>80	50-80	<50

Quality score = Completeness - 5 × Contamination

Typical Taxonomic Diversity

• Gut microbiome - 500-1000 species, dominated by Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes
• Soil - 1000s of species, highly diverse
• Marine - Variable, often dominated by few abundant species

Computational Requirements

Resource Estimates

Analysis Type	Reads	CPU Cores	RAM	Storage	Time
Taxonomic profiling only	10M pairs	8-16	16-32 GB	~10 GB	1-4 hours
Assembly + binning	50M pairs	32-64	128-256 GB	~500 GB	1-2 days
Deep metagenomics	200M+ pairs	64+	256-512 GB	~2 TB	3-7 days

Resource Recommendation

Metagenomic assembly is extremely resource-intensive. Use LRZ AI Systems or high-memory cluster nodes. See Infrastructure Guide.

Common Issues & Troubleshooting

Metagenomic Challenges

Low taxonomic assignment rates

• Database may be outdated - update Kraken2/MetaPhlAn databases
• Novel organisms not in reference databases
• Poor sequencing quality - check with FastQC
• Host contamination - filter host reads first

Poor MAG quality

• Insufficient sequencing depth (aim for 10-50 Gb total)
• Low abundance organisms (<1%) difficult to bin
• Strain heterogeneity within species
• Try multiple binning tools and use DAS Tool to merge results

Memory errors during assembly

• Use MEGAHIT instead of MetaSPAdes (more memory efficient)
• Reduce k-mer size
• Subsample reads for pilot assembly
• Use cluster with high-memory nodes

Too many/too few bins

• Adjust minimum contig length (1000-2000 bp)
• Modify MetaBAT2 sensitivity parameters
• Check coverage depth across samples
• Consider differential coverage binning

Functional profiling failures

• HUMAnN requires substantial resources
• Try subsampling to 10M reads first
• Ensure databases are properly installed
• Use pre-computed profiles when available

Sample Data & Practice

Public metagenomic datasets:

• Human Microbiome Project - HMP Data Portal
• Earth Microbiome Project - EMP Portal
• NCBI SRA - Filter by "metagenome" datatype
• MG-RAST - Metagenomic analysis server with example datasets

Next Steps & Related Analyses

After metagenomic analysis:

• MAG refinement - Manual curation and polishing
• Metabolic reconstruction - KEGG pathway analysis
• Comparative metagenomics - Compare communities across conditions
• Integration with metadata - Correlate with environmental/clinical variables
• Time series analysis - Track community changes over time
• MAG phylogeny - Place genomes in evolutionary context

Related Use Cases:

• De Novo Assembly - Assembling individual MAGs
• Transcriptomics - Metatranscriptomics for active genes

Key Considerations

• Sequencing depth is critical - Deeper sequencing captures more community diversity (aim for 10-50 Gb)
• Assembly vs. read-based - Choose based on whether you need MAGs or just profiles
• Database selection - Taxonomic assignment quality depends on reference database completeness
• MAG quality assessment - Always check completeness and contamination with CheckM
• Multiple profiling methods - Different tools may give different results; use complementary approaches
• Replication is essential - Biological variability high in microbiomes; use multiple samples per condition
• Controls matter - Include negative controls to assess contamination