AUTHOR=Laczny Cedric C. , Muller Emilie E. L. , Heintz-Buschart Anna , Herold Malte , Lebrun Laura A. , Hogan Angela , May Patrick , de Beaufort Carine , Wilmes Paul TITLE=Identification, Recovery, and Refinement of Hitherto Undescribed Population-Level Genomes from the Human Gastrointestinal Tract JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology VOLUME=7 YEAR=2016 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2016.00884 DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2016.00884 ISSN=1664-302X ABSTRACT=

Linking taxonomic identity and functional potential at the population-level is important for the study of mixed microbial communities and is greatly facilitated by the availability of microbial reference genomes. While the culture-independent recovery of population-level genomes from environmental samples using the binning of metagenomic data has expanded available reference genome catalogs, several microbial lineages remain underrepresented. Here, we present two reference-independent approaches for the identification, recovery, and refinement of hitherto undescribed population-level genomes. The first approach is aimed at genome recovery of varied taxa and involves multi-sample automated binning using CANOPY CLUSTERING complemented by visualization and human-augmented binning using VIZBINpost hoc. The second approach is particularly well-suited for the study of specific taxa and employs VIZBINde novo. Using these approaches, we reconstructed a total of six population-level genomes of distinct and divergent representatives of the Alphaproteobacteria class, the Mollicutes class, the Clostridiales order, and the Melainabacteria class from human gastrointestinal tract-derived metagenomic data. Our results demonstrate that, while automated binning approaches provide great potential for large-scale studies of mixed microbial communities, these approaches should be complemented with informative visualizations because expert-driven inspection and refinements are critical for the recovery of high-quality population-level genomes.