Introduction
As technology and methodology have allowed for more advanced assemblies of metagenomes, the need for commensurate assignment of quality to these assemblies has become evident. There are currently no set standards for describing the quality of sequencing, assembly, or analysis of metagenomic assemblies. Uncorrected, this may lead to faulty conclusions based on assumptions that the assembly is more or less accurate, or representative of the sample, than it truly is. This need is similar to, but far more complex than, the dilemma that faced the microbial sequencing and assembly community as more and more genomes were sequenced with new technologies and assembled with novel algorithms.
For bacterial genomes, the quality of assembly and finishing efforts has been standardized for several years, resulting in a much better understanding of the types of analyses that can be performed on each level of finished genome and the resulting value. While the need for standards in...
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Scholz, M.B., Lo, CC., Chain, P. (2015). Challenge of Metagenome Assembly and Possible Standards. In: Nelson, K.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metagenomics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7478-5_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7478-5_26
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