AbstractSponges underpin the productivity of coral reefs, yet few of their microbial symbionts have been functionally characterised. Here we present an ana

A large fraction of aquatic bacteria remains uncultured. Here, the authors cultivated 627 strains of abundant freshwater bacteria from 14 European lakes, thus generating a collection that includes many previously uncultured, oligotrophic bacteria that may serve as model organisms.

In contrast to living organisms, viruses were long thought to lack protein synthesis machinery and instead depend on host factors to translate viral transcripts. Here, we discover that giant DNA virus...

LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.

Humans and animals are ubiquitously colonized by Enterobacteriaceae , a bacterial family that contains both commensals and clinically significant pathogens. Here, we report Enterobacteriaceae megaplas...

This cross-sectional study investigates population-level effectiveness and herd protection in the first 17 years after human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among adolescent girls and young women at ...

Background Long-read sequencing has revolutionised metagenomics through improved metagenome assembly, taxonomic classification and functional characterisation. Automation can enhance the throughput, reproducibility, and accuracy of library preparation. However, the validation of automated library preparation protocols remains undetermined for metagenomic workflows, which are particularly sensitive to methodological perturbation. Here, we compare long-read metagenomic sequencing of environmental samples through parallel manual and automated protocols. Results Although automated library preparation led to minor reduction in read and contig lengths, taxonomic classification rate and alpha diversity was slightly higher than manual libraries, including the detection of more rare taxa. Despite this, no significant difference in microbial community structure was identified between manual and automated libraries. Conclusions Despite minor differences in sequencing and classification metrics, automated and manual library preparation resulted in comparable characterization of environmental community metagenomes. These findings demonstrate the suitability of automation for high-throughput long-read metagenomics, with broad applicability to automated long-read sequencing for improved efficiency and reproducibility.