FOCUS

FOCUS is a software tool for the taxonomic profiling microbial communities by analyzing unannotated shotgun sequencing reads in metagenomic samples. One of the core challenges in metagenomics is accurately identifying the diverse organisms present in a sample and profiling their abundances, which is crucial for various biological and medical research applications, including disease diagnostics, environmental studies, and understanding microbial ecosystems.

Addressing the limitations of existing methods, which often struggle to scale with the increasing volume and length of sequencing data provided by modern platforms, FOCUS employs an agile composition-based approach. It utilizes non-negative least squares (NNLS) analysis to efficiently and accurately report the organisms in metagenomic samples and their relative abundances. This method stands out for its ability to handle the data-rich environment of contemporary metagenomic research, providing a scalable solution that maintains accuracy even as data volumes expand.