MetaCONNET: A metagenomic polishing tool for long-read assemblies

PLoS One. 2024 Dec 3;19(12):e0313515. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0313515. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Accurate and high coverage genome assemblies are the basis for downstream analysis of metagenomic studies. Long-read sequencing technology is an ideal tool to facilitate the assemblies of metagenome, except for the drawback of usually producing reads with high sequencing error rate. Many polishing tools were developed to correct the sequencing error, but most are designed on the ground of one or two species. Considering the complexity and uneven depth of metagenomic study, we present a novel deep-learning polishing tool named MetaCONNET for polishing metagenomic assemblies. We evaluate MetaCONNET against Medaka, CONNET and NextPolish in accuracy, coverage, contiguity and resource consumption. Our results demonstrate that MetaCONNET provides a valuable polishing tool and can be applied to many metagenomic studies.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Deep Learning
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / methods
  • Metagenome*
  • Metagenomics* / methods
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / methods
  • Software

Grants and funding

Z.J. was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant number: 2022M720308), and Y.S. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number: 32001043). The funding organization had no role in study design or conduct of this research.