AQMM: Enabling Absolute Quantification of Metagenome and Metatranscriptome

Abstract

Metatranscriptome has become increasingly important along with the application of next generation sequencing in the studies of microbial functional gene activity in environmental samples. However, the quantification of target active gene is hindered by the current relative quantification methods, especially when tracking the sharp environmental change. Great needs are here for an easy-to-perform method to obtain the absolute quantification. By borrowing information from the parallel metagenome, an absolute quantification method for both metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data to per gene/cell/volume/gram level was developed. The effectiveness of AQMM was validated by simulated experiments and was demonstrated with a real experimental design of comparing activated sludge with and without foaming. Our method provides a novel bioinformatic approach to fast and accurately conduct absolute quantification of metagenome and metatranscriptome in environmental samples. The AQMM can be accessed from https://github.com/biofuture/aqmm.