16. Commonly used metagenomics tools

Here I’ve complied a (non-exhaustive) list of commonly used tools for analysing metagenomics data. As new tools are constantly being developed, it is likely that these tools will become outdated, but this will hopefully provide a great starting off point for further reading. Note that I’ve included tools for both short read (Illumina) and long read (Nanopore) data

Quality control and preprocessing of reads

  • FASTQC
  • fastp
  • trimmomatic
  • PRINSEQ
  • nanoQC
  • pycoQC
  • LongQC
  • NanoPack
  • MultiQC
  • Cutadapt

Read mapping

  • BWA
  • Bowtie2
  • SOAP2
  • GEM3
  • Novoalign
  • BBMap
  • Minimap2

De novo metagenomic assemblers

  • MEGAHIT
  • metaSPADES
  • IDBA-UD
  • MetaVelvet
  • OMEGA
  • VICUNA
  • SOAPdenovo2
  • Canu
  • metaFlye
  • miniasm
  • Wtdbg2

Genome/Contig binning

  • DASTool
  • MetaBat2
  • MetaWRAP
  • VAMB
  • CONCOCT
  • MaxBin
  • GroopM
  • MetaBinner
  • MetaDecoder
  • COMEBIN
  • BASALT
  • LRBinner
  • MetaBCC-LR

Assembly quality control Tools

  • MetaQUAST/QUAST
  • DeepMAsED
  • GenomeQC
  • REAPR
  • CheckM
  • BUSCO
  • EvalCon
  • GUNC
  • MAGISTA
  • Bandage

Taxonomic identification Tools

  • MetaPhlAn
  • GTDB-TK
  • Kraken2
  • Bracken
  • Centrifuge
  • Kaiju
  • DIAMOND
  • MMseqs2
  • BLAST
  • Sourmash
  • CLARK
  • TaxMaps
  • mOTUs2
  • BugSeq
  • GOTTCHA
  • MetaCache
  • MetaMaps
  • MetaBit

Functional profiling tools