Advances and Challenges in Metatranscriptomic Analysis

摘要: Sequencing-based analyses of microbiomes have traditionally focused on addressing the question community membership and profiling taxonomic abundance through amplicon sequencing 16 rRNA genes. More recently, shotgun metagenomics, which involves random all genomic content a microbiome, has dominated this arena due to advancements in technology throughput capability profile genes as well microbiome membership. While these methods revealed great number insights into wide variety microbiomes, both approaches only describe presence organisms or genes, not whether they are active members microbiome. To obtain deeper how microbial responds over time their changing environmental conditions, scientists beginning employ large-scale metatranscriptomics approaches. Here, we present comprehensive review computational study transcriptomes. We major burgeoning field, compare strengths weaknesses other analysis methods, list available tools workflows, use cases limitations method. envision that field will continue grow exponentially, scope projects (e.g. longitudinal studies transcriptional responses perturbations time) resulting data. This provide options for data highlight areas need development.