Yu FB, Blainey PC, Schulz F, Woyke T, Horowitz MA, Quake SR. Microfluidic-based mini-metagenomics enables discovery of novel microbial lineages from complex environmental samples.
eLife 2017;
6. [PMID:
28678007 PMCID:
PMC5498146 DOI:
10.7554/elife.26580]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 47] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/07/2017] [Accepted: 06/17/2017] [Indexed: 12/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Metagenomics and single-cell genomics have enabled genome discovery from unknown branches of life. However, extracting novel genomes from complex mixtures of metagenomic data can still be challenging and represents an ill-posed problem which is generally approached with ad hoc methods. Here we present a microfluidic-based mini-metagenomic method which offers a statistically rigorous approach to extract novel microbial genomes while preserving single-cell resolution. We used this approach to analyze two hot spring samples from Yellowstone National Park and extracted 29 new genomes, including three deeply branching lineages. The single-cell resolution enabled accurate quantification of genome function and abundance, down to 1% in relative abundance. Our analyses of genome level SNP distributions also revealed low to moderate environmental selection. The scale, resolution, and statistical power of microfluidic-based mini-metagenomics make it a powerful tool to dissect the genomic structure of microbial communities while effectively preserving the fundamental unit of biology, the single cell.
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