Tag: Metaxa2 Database Repository

Today, we released a minor update to Metaxa2, bringing it to version 2.2.2. The new version includes some bug fixes related to the Metaxa2 Database Repository, as well as a new “–temp” option allowing the user to specify the location for the temporary files. No other changes have been made in this version.

The update can be found at the Metaxa2 software page.

A few days ago, my attention was turned to a duplicate in the COI database bundled with Metaxa2 2.2. While this duplicate sequence should not cause any troubles for Metaxa2 itself, it has created issues for people using the database itself together with, e.g., QIIME. Therefore, I have today issued a very very minor update to the Metaxa2 2.2 package as well as the entry in the Metaxa2 Database Repository, removing the duplicate sequence. I deemed that this was not significant enough to issue a new version, particularly as no code was changed and it did not cause issues for the software itself, so the version will stay at 2.2 for the time being. Happy barcoding!

Last week, I uploaded a new database to the Metaxa2 Database Repository, called DAIRYdb. DAIRYdb (1) is a manually curated reference database for 16S rRNA amplicon sequences from dairy products. Significant efforts have been put into improving annotation algorithms, such as Metaxa2 (2), while less attention has been put into curation of reliable and consistent databases (3). Previous studies have shown that databases restricted to the studied environment improve unambiguous taxonomy annotation to the species level, thanks to consistent taxonomy, lack of blanks and reduced competition between different reference taxonomies (4-5). The usage of DAIRYdb in combination with different classification tools allows taxonomy annotation accuracy of over 90% at species level for microbiome samples from dairy products, where species identification is mandatory due to the affiliation to few closely related genera of most dominant lactic acid bacteria.

The database can be added to your Metaxa2 (version 2.2 or later) installation by using the following command:

metaxa2_install_database -g SSU_DAIRYdb_v1.1.2

Further adaptations of the DAIRYdb can be found on GitHub and the preprint has been deposited in BioRxiv (1). DAIRYdb was developed by Marco Meola, Etienne Rifa and their collaborators, who also provided most of the text for this post. Thanks Marco for this excellent addition to the database collection!

References

1. Meola M, Rifa E, Shani N, Delbes C, Berthoud H, Chassard C: DAIRYdb: A manually curated gold standard reference database for improved taxonomy annotation of 16S rRNA gene sequences from dairy products. bioRxiv, 386151 (2018). doi: 10.1101/386151
2. Bengtsson-Palme J, Hartmann M, Eriksson KM, Pal C, Thorell K, Larsson DGJ, Nilsson RH: Metaxa2: Improved identification and taxonomic classification of small and large subunit rRNA in metagenomic data. Molecular Ecology Resources, 15, 6, 1403–1414 (2015). doi: 10.1111/1755-0998.12399
3. Edgar RC: Accuracy of taxonomy prediction for 16S rRNA and fungal ITS sequences. PeerJ, 6, e4652 (2018). doi: 10.7717/peerj.4652
4. Ritari J, Salojärvi J, Last L, de Vos WM: Improved taxonomic assignment of human intestinal 16S rRNA sequences by a dedicated reference database. BMC Genomics, 16, 1, 1056 (2015). doi: 10.1186/s12864-015-2265-y
5. Newton ILG, Roeselers G: The effect of training set on the classification of honey bee gut microbiota using the naïve bayesian classifier. BMC Microbiology, 12, 1, 221 (2012). doi: 10.1186/1471-2180-12-221