Bayesian community-wide culture-independent microbial source tracking

D Knights, J Kuczynski, ES Charlson, J Zaneveld… - Nature …, 2011 - nature.com
Nature methods, 2011nature.com
Contamination is a critical issue in high-throughput metagenomic studies, yet progress
toward a comprehensive solution has been limited. We present SourceTracker, a Bayesian
approach to estimate the proportion of contaminants in a given community that come from
possible source environments. We applied SourceTracker to microbial surveys from
neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), offices and molecular biology laboratories, and
provide a database of known contaminants for future testing.
Abstract
Contamination is a critical issue in high-throughput metagenomic studies, yet progress toward a comprehensive solution has been limited. We present SourceTracker, a Bayesian approach to estimate the proportion of contaminants in a given community that come from possible source environments. We applied SourceTracker to microbial surveys from neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), offices and molecular biology laboratories, and provide a database of known contaminants for future testing.
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