MetAnnotate: function-specific taxonomic profiling and comparison of metagenomes

BACKGROUND: Metagenomes provide access to the taxonomic composition and functional capabilities of microbial communities. Although metagenomic analysis methods exist for estimating overall community composition or metabolic potential, identifying specific taxa that encode specific functions or pathways of interest can be more challenging. Here we present MetAnnotate, which addresses the common question: “which organisms perform my function of interest within my metagenome(s) of interest?” MetAnnotate uses profile hidden Markov models to analyze shotgun metagenomes for genes and pathways of interest, classifies retrieved sequences either through a phylogenetic placement or best hit approach, and enables comparison of these profiles between metagenomes. RESULTS: Based on a simulated metagenome dataset, the tool achieves high taxonomic classification accuracy for a broad range of genes, including both markers of community abundance and specific biological pathways. Lastly, we demonstrate MetAnnotate by analyzing for cobalamin (vitamin B(12)) synthesis genes across hundreds of aquatic metagenomes in a fraction of the time required by the commonly used Basic Local Alignment Search Tool top hit approach. CONCLUSIONS: MetAnnotate is multi-threaded and installable as a local web application or command-line tool on Linux systems. Metannotate is a useful framework for general and/or function-specific taxonomic profiling and comparison of metagenomes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12915-015-0195-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.