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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Apr 30.
Published in final edited form as: J Am Coll Cardiol. 2019 Apr 30;73(16):2089–2105. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2019.03.024

Figure 2: Contemporary Techniques for Metagenomic Sequencing.

Figure 2:

Bioinformatic methods for functional metagenomics to define the composition and function of uncultured microbial communities using sequencing-based assays. Community DNA Is extracted from a sample and the bacterial taxa present are most frequently defined by amplifying the 16S rRNA gene and sequencing it with highly similar sequences grouped into Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs). Direct metagenomic sequencing using a “shotgun” approach to directly compare with reference genomes or gene catalogues improves taxonomic resolution and allow observation of single nucleotide polymorphisms and other variant sequences with functional capabilities determined by comparing the sequences to functional databases (144).