For anyone trying to get to grips with DNA metabarcoding data pipelines, here’s a detailed overview of a whole “pile” of pipelines by Hakimzadeh et al. (2024), covering metabarcoding pipeline structures, 32 software suites or precompiled pipelines, and lots of tools 👇
In their article Hakimzadeh et al. (2024) discuss the different processes involved in metabarcoding pipelines, from demultiplexing multiplexed reads, to clustering, to taxonomy assignment, and everything in between.
For each process they review general approaches, process-specific problems, and options for software and tools, with some key case studies and a whole load of references to help you to find out more.
Unfortunately their review covers Illumina and PacBio sequencing data but not metabarcoding with products from Oxford Nanopore Technologies such as MinION. Even so, there may be some overlap in general methodologies or tools that could make it useful for ONT users, especially when working with specific metabarcoding markers.
The article also has some very useful resources beyond the text:
⭐ If you want to know which pipelines run on Windows/Mac/Linux operating systems, or on the web? Check out Figure 2 in the article.
⭐ If you want to read a mini-synopsis of all the pipelines, with links to plugins, GitHub, and documentation, check out the super-useful Supplementary file 1 in the supplementary data on the article link below.
⭐ And if you want to see which software suites allow which tools to be used, check against Table S1, again in the supplementary data.
All very useful information if you're trying to get an understanding of the software landscape available for metabarcoding data processing, and one to bookmark for future reference!
You can find the article here:
Hakimzadeh et al. (2024). A pile of pipelines: An overview of the bioinformatics software for metabarcoding data analyses. Molecular Ecology Resources, 24(5), e13847.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/…
And for those without journal access, you can read a preprint on Researchgate here:
researchgate.net/publication…