OrtSuite

OrtSuite is an open-source software pipeline that predicts microbial interactions within complex microbial communities based on their genomic content. The workflow consists of three bash commands and combines ortholog clustering with targeted genome annotation strategies, allowing researchers to focus on specific ecosystem processes of interest.

The pipeline enables hypothesis-driven data analysis, such as assessing microbial interactions in particular ecosystems. OrtSuite has been shown to accurately identify known orthologs involved in specific processes, such as benzoate degradation, matching 96% of experimentally verified KEGG orthologs in a group of benzoate degraders.

Moreover, OrtSuite has been evaluated in identifying putative synergistic species interactions using sequenced genomes from an independent study, which had previously proposed potential species interactions in benzoate degradation.