Shallow shotgun sequencing of the microbiome recapitulates 16S amplicon results and provides functional insights

Prevailing 16S rRNA gene-amplicon methods for characterizing the bacterial microbiome are economical, but result in coarse taxonomic classifications, are subject to primer and 16S copy number biases, and do not allow for direct estimation of microbiome functional potential. While deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing can overcome many of these limitations, it is prohibitively expensive for large sample sets. We evaluated the ability of shallow shotgun metagenomic sequencing to characterize taxonomic and functional patterns in the fecal microbiome of a model population of feral horses (Sable Island, Canada). Since 2007, this unmanaged population has been the subject of an individual-based, long-term ecological study. Using deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing, we determined the sequencing depth required to accurately characterize the horse microbiome. In comparing conventional versus high-throughput shotgun metagenomic library preparation techniques, we validate the use of more cost-effective lab methods. Finally, we characterize similarities between 16S amplicon and shallow shotgun characterization of the microbiome, and demonstrate that the latter recapitulates biological patterns first described in a published amplicon dataset. Unlike amplicon data, we demonstrate how shallow shotgun metagenomic data also provided useful insights about microbiome functional potential which support previously hypothesized diet effects in this study system.