MyTaxa: an advanced taxonomic classifier for genomic and metagenomic sequences

Determining the taxonomic affiliation of sequences assembled from metagenomes remains a major bottleneck that affects research across the fields of environmental, clinical and evolutionary microbiology. Here, we introduce MyTaxa, a homology-based bioinformatics framework to classify metagenomic and genomic sequences with unprecedented accuracy. The distinguishing aspect of MyTaxa is that it employs all genes present in an unknown sequence as classifiers, weighting each gene based on its (predetermined) classifying power at a given taxonomic level and frequency of horizontal gene transfer. MyTaxa also implements a novel classification scheme based on the genome-aggregate average amino acid identity concept to…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: 1241046
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Award: DE-SC0004601
• OO
  Office of Science

  Award: DE-SC0004601
• BA
  Biological and Environmental Research