MetaPro: A scalable and reproducible data processing and analysis pipeline for metatranscriptomic investigation of microbial communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Whole microbiome RNASeq (metatranscriptomics) has emerged as a powerful technology to functionally interrogate microbial communities. A key challenge is how best to process, analyze and interpret these complex datasets. In a typical application, a single metatranscriptomic dataset may comprise from tens to hundreds of millions of sequence reads. These reads must first be processed and filtered for low quality and potential contaminants, before being annotated with taxonomic and functional labels and subsequently collated to generate global bacterial gene expression profiles. Results Here we present MetaPro, a flexible, massively scalable metatranscriptomic data analysis pipeline that is cross-platform compatible through its implementation within a Docker framework. MetaPro starts with raw sequence read input (single end or paired end reads) and processes them through a tiered series of filtering, assembly and annotation steps. In addition to yielding a final list of bacterial genes and their relative expression, MetaPro delivers a taxonomic breakdown based on the consensus of complementary prediction algorithms, together with a focused breakdown of enzymes, readily visualized through the Cytoscape network visualization tool. We benchmark the performance of MetaPro against two current state of the art pipelines and demonstrate improved performance and functionality. Conclusion MetaPro represents an effective integrated solution for the processing and analysis of metatranscriptomic datasets. Its modular architecture allows new algorithms to be deployed as they are developed, ensuring its longevity. To aid user uptake of the pipeline, MetaPro, together with an established tutorial that has been developed for educational purposes is made freely available at https://github.com/ParkinsonLab/MetaPro . The software is freely available under the GNU general public license v3.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.008 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".