MetaFunc

MetaFunc integrates taxonomic identification with functional annotation to link microbial taxa to gene ontology (GO) terms and enable combined microbial and host analyses from high-throughput sequencing reads.

Key Features:

• Integrated taxonomic and functional analysis: Identifies species present in microbiome samples and associates those taxa with gene ontology (GO) annotations to reveal functional roles.
• Host gene analysis and read segregation: Maps reads to a host genome and separates host-derived reads from microbial reads prior to downstream microbiome analyses.
• Differential abundance and expression analyses: Performs differential abundance analysis of microbial taxa and differential gene expression analysis for host or microbial genes.
• Gene set enrichment and correlation analysis: Conducts gene set enrichment analysis and computes correlations between microbial species and host genes to explore potential interactions.

Scientific Applications:

• Functional microbiome profiling: Linking taxa to GO annotations to elucidate community-level functional capabilities.
• Host–microbe interaction studies: Combining host read mapping with correlation analyses between microbial species and host genes to investigate interactions and co-regulation.
• Oncological microbiome research (colorectal cancer): Applied to metatranscriptomic datasets from colorectal cancer to explore microbial and host functional dynamics.

Methodology:

Accepts high-throughput sequencing reads, identifies species, assigns GO annotations to taxa, maps reads to a host genome to separate host-derived reads, performs differential abundance and differential gene expression analyses and gene set enrichment, and computes correlations between microbial species and host genes.