Shotgun metagenomic sequencing is currently the only method to analyze whole microbial communities in various environments, widely used for taxonomic profiling and functional analysis of microbial communities. Equipped with the powerful sequencing technique and extensive experience in microbial community analysis, Creative Biolabs offers one-stop shotgun metagenomic sequencing services with high coverage and high resolution to support comprehensive analysis of microbial community biodiversity and function.
Introduction of Shotgun Metagenomic Sequencing
Shotgun metagenomic sequencing is used to all microbial genomes without prior knowledge of the community in a given complex sample. The sequencing process is simply summarized as follows: the DNA isolated from a sample is cut into smaller pieces and subsequently sequenced using NGS. This technique is widely used to evaluate bacterial diversity and detect the abundance of microbes in various environments. Compared to 16S rRNA sequencing, shotgun sequencing targets the entirety of the microbial genetic information contained in an environmental sample, including viruses and fungi that cannot be detected through 16S sequencing. Besides, shotgun sequencing is less susceptible to the biases inherent in targeted gene amplification. These features enable shotgun sequencing more accurate in the determination of the relative abundances of different organisms. In addition to these advantages, shotgun sequencing allows the detection of very low abundance members of the microbial community that maybe not detected using traditional methods.
