A comparison of single-coverage and multi-coverage metagenomic binning reveals extensive hidden contamination

Nat Methods. 2023 Aug;20(8):1170-1173. doi: 10.1038/s41592-023-01934-8. Epub 2023 Jun 29.

Abstract

Metagenomic binning has revolutionized the study of uncultured microorganisms. Here we compare single- and multi-coverage binning on the same set of samples, and demonstrate that multi-coverage binning produces better results than single-coverage binning and identifies contaminant contigs and chimeric bins that other approaches miss. While resource expensive, multi-coverage binning is a superior approach and should always be performed over single-coverage binning.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Metagenome*
  • Metagenomics* / methods
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / methods

Associated data

  • figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.19733509