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Traditionally, microbial genome sequencing has been restricted to the small number of species that can be grown in pure culture [1]. The progressive development of culture-independent methods over the last 15 years now allows researchers to sequence microbial communities directly from environmental samples. This approach is commonly referred to as “metagenomics” or “community genomics”. However, the term metagenomics is applied liberally in the literature to describe any culture-independent analysis of microbial communities. Here, we define metagenomics as shotgun (“random”) sequencing of the genomic DNA of a sample taken directly from the environment. The metagenome can be thought of as a sampling of the collective genome of the microbial community. We outline the considerations and analyses that should be undertaken to ensure the success of a metagenomic sequencing project, including the choice of sequencing platform and methods for assembly, binning, annotation, and comparative analysis.

The Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine (PGM) is a new sequencing platform that substantially differs from other sequencing technologies by measuring pH rather than light to detect polymerisation events. Using re-sequencing datasets, we comprehensively characterise the biases and errors introduced by the PGM at both the base and flow level, across a combination of factors, including chip density, sequencing kit, template species and machine. We found two distinct insertion/deletion (indel) error types that accounted for the majority of errors introduced by the PGM. The main error source was inaccurate flow-calls, which introduced indels at a raw rate of 2.84% (1.38% after quality clipping) using the OneTouch 200 bp kit. Inaccurate flow-calls typically resulted in over-called short-homopolymers and under-called long-homopolymers. Flow-call accuracy decreased with consecutive flow cycles, but we also found significant periodic fluctuations in the flow error-rate, corresponding to specific positions within the flow-cycle pattern. Another less common PGM error, high frequency indel (HFI) errors, are indels that occur at very high frequency in the reads relative to a given base position in the reference genome, but in the majority of instances were not replicated consistently across separate runs. HFI errors occur approximately once every thousand bases in the reference, and correspond to 0.06% of bases in reads. Currently, the PGM does not achieve the accuracy of competing light-based technologies. However, flow-call inaccuracy is systematic and the statistical models of flow-values developed here will enable PGM-specific bioinformatics approaches to be developed, which will account for these errors. HFI errors may prove more challenging to address, especially for polymorphism and amplicon applications, but may be overcome by sequencing the same DNA template across multiple chips.

Background The acute response to genotoxic carcinogens in rats is an important model for researching cancer initiation events. In this report we define the normal rat colonic epithelium by describing transcriptional events along the anterior-posterior axis and then investigate the acute effects of azoxymethane (AOM) on gene expression, with a particular emphasis on pathways associated with the maintenance of genomic integrity in the proximal and distal compartments using whole genome expression microarrays. Results There are large transcriptional changes that occur in epithelial gene expression along the anterior-posterior axis of the normal healthy rat colon. AOM administration superimposes substantial changes on these basal gene expression patterns in both the distal and proximal rat colonic epithelium. In particular, the pathways associated with cell cycle and DNA damage and repair processes appear to be disrupted in favour of apoptosis. Conclusions The healthy rats' colon exhibits extensive gene expression changes between its proximal and distal ends. The most common changes are associated with metabolism, but more subtle expression changes in genes involved in genomic homeostasis are also evident. These latter changes presumably protect and maintain a healthy colonic epithelium against incidental dietary and environmental insults. AOM induces substantial changes in gene expression, resulting in an early switch in the cell cycle process, involving p53 signalling, towards cell cycle arrest leading to the more effective process of apoptosis to counteract this genotoxic insult.

The relationship between phage and their microbial hosts is difficult to elucidate in complex natural ecosystems. Engineered systems performing enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR), offer stable, lower complexity communities for studying phage-host interactions. Here, metagenomic data from an EBPR reactor dominated by Candidatus Accumulibacter phosphatis (CAP), led to the recovery of three complete and six partial phage genomes. Heat-stable nucleoid structuring (H-NS) protein, a global transcriptional repressor in bacteria, was identified in one of the complete phage genomes (EPV1), and was most similar to a homolog in CAP. We infer that EPV1 is a CAP-specific phage and has the potential to repress up to 6% of host genes based on the presence of putative H-NS binding sites in the CAP genome. These genes include CRISPR associated proteins and a Type III restriction-modification system, which are key host defense mechanisms against phage infection. Further, EPV1 was the only member of the phage community found in an EBPR microbial metagenome collected seven months prior. We propose that EPV1 laterally acquired H-NS from CAP providing it with a means to reduce bacterial defenses, a selective advantage over other phage in the EBPR system. Phage encoded H-NS could constitute a previously unrecognized weapon in the phage-host arms race.

Azoxymethane (AOM) induced carcinogenesis in rats is an important model of human colorectal cancer (CRC). Using microarrays, gene expression changes in the rat colonic epithelium immediately after AOM injection (Acute model) and in AOM-induced tumours (Cancer model, 27 weeks after exposure) were compared to those occurring in human colorectal cancer. In rats, global gene expression in normal proximal versus distal rat colonic tissue differed markedly in both models. Rat tumours from different regions of the colon showed limited positional variability in gene expression. Therefore, loss of proximal/distal ‘site of origin’ signatures in tumours is an important consequence of AOM-induced carcinogenesis. In the Acute model, AOM exposure induced substantial changes in gene expression in the colonic epithelium. Whilst some of these changes were still apparent in the Cancer model, they were considerably reduced; suggesting repair has occurred in the damaged epithelial cells that did not progress into tumours. The tumour gene expression was radically different to the apparently ‘normal’ colonic epithelium. A comparative genomics in silico tool was developed to compare the rat microarray data derived from normal and carcinogen exposed colonic epithelium or tumour tissue with related data from positionally-matched human CRC and normal colonic epithelium. Gene expression networks were devised for both models. There was some overlap (41% and 21% respectively) when differentially expressed genes in the rat Acute and Cancer models were compared to their human orthologs differentially expressed in cancer. Networks prepared for these conserved genes further highlight similarities between these rat models and human CRC.