Accurate estimation of intraspecific microbial gene content variation in metagenomic data with MIDAS v3 and StrainPGC

Abstract

Metagenomics has greatly expanded our understanding of the human gut microbiome by revealing a vast diversity of bacterial species within and across individuals. Even within a single species, different strains can have highly divergent gene content, affecting traits such as antibiotic resistance, metabolism, and virulence. Methods that harness metagenomic data to resolve strain-level differences in functional potential are crucial for understanding the causes and consequences of this intraspecific diversity. The enormous size of pangenome references, strain mixing within samples, and inconsistent sequencing depth present challenges for existing tools that analyze samples one at a time. To address this gap, we updated the MIDAS pangenome profiler, now released as version 3, and developed StrainPGC, an approach to strain-specific gene content estimation that combines strain tracking and correlations across multiple samples. We validate our integrated analysis using a complex synthetic community of strains from the human gut and find that StrainPGC outperforms existing approaches. Analyzing a large, publicly available metagenome collection from inflammatory bowel disease patients and healthy controls, we catalog the functional repertoires of thousands of strains across hundreds of species, capturing extensive diversity missing from reference databases. Finally, we apply StrainPGC to metagenomes from a clinical trial of fecal microbiota transplantation for the treatment of ulcerative colitis. We identify two Escherichia coli strains, from two different donors, that are both frequently transmitted to patients but have notable differences in functional potential. StrainPGC and MIDAS v3 together enable precise, intraspecific pangenomic investigations using large collections of metagenomic data without microbial isolation or de novo assembly.