TANGO

TANGO performs optimal taxonomic assignment of ambiguous sequence reads from pyrosequencing and other high-throughput sequencing technologies for metagenomic characterization of microbial communities.

Key Features:

• Accuracy and Precision: TANGO applies advanced algorithms to achieve high-precision taxonomic classification of sequence reads across diverse metagenomic samples.
• Flexible Reference Taxonomy Integration: Supports taxonomic assignment using multiple reference taxonomies sourced from different databases to accommodate variations in taxonomy structures.
• Novel Pre-processing Step: Incorporates a pre-processing step specifically for integrating alternative reference taxonomies and preparing reads for classification.
• Comprehensive Methodology Enhancements: Pipeline improvements refine the assignment process to increase efficiency and reliability of taxonomic assignments.
• Performance Validation: Performance has been evaluated on four real metagenomic datasets and on synthetic datasets to assess effectiveness.

Scientific Applications:

• Metagenomic taxonomic profiling: Enables accurate characterization of microbial community composition and function from high-throughput sequencing data.
• Cross-taxonomy comparisons: Facilitates comparison of taxonomic assignments across different reference taxonomies and databases.

Methodology:

Implements a novel pre-processing step to integrate alternative reference taxonomies and an improved assignment process; performance was evaluated using four real metagenomic datasets and synthetic datasets.