RiboSnake - a user-friendly, robust, reproducible, multipurpose and documentation-extensive pipeline for 16S rRNA gene microbiome analysis

GigaByte. 2024 Aug 31:2024:gigabyte132. doi: 10.46471/gigabyte.132. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Background: Next-generation sequencing for microbial communities has become a standard technique. However, the computational analysis remains resource-intensive. With declining costs and growing adoption of sequencing-based methods in many fields, validated, fully automated, reproducible and flexible pipelines are increasingly essential in various scientific fields.

Results: We present RiboSnake, a validated, automated, reproducible QIIME2-based pipeline implemented in Snakemake for analysing 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing data. RiboSnake includes pre-packaged validated parameter sets optimized for different sample types, from environmental samples to patient data. The configuration packages can be easily adapted and shared, requiring minimal user input.

Conclusion: RiboSnake is a new alternative for researchers employing 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and looking for a customizable and user-friendly pipeline for microbiome analyses with in vitro validated settings. By automating the analysis with validated parameters for diverse sample types, RiboSnake enhances existing methods significantly. The workflow repository can be found on GitHub (https://github.com/IKIM-Essen/RiboSnake).

Grants and funding

We acknowledge funding from 01ZZ2013- SMITH - Medical Informatics Initiative Germany, PI: Folker Meyer. The funders played no role in the design or execution of the study. We used internal resources to cover the sequencing and laboratory costs incurred.