Metagenomic Assembly and Gene Prediction
摘要
Metagenomic assembly and gene prediction connect quality-controlled reads to downstream microbiome analyses. This chapter outlines core assembly strategies, including per-sample versus co-assembly and short-read versus hybrid approaches, and highlights key parameters and metrics for evaluating assembly quality. Gene prediction from contigs and the construction of nonredundant gene catalogs are introduced as fundamental steps for representing community coding potential. The resulting contigs and gene sets provide essential input for metagenome-assembled genome (MAG) reconstruction, as well as taxonomic and functional annotation in subsequent chapters.