Metacontam: A Negative Control-Free Decontamination Method for Metagenomic Analysis (opens in new tab)

Shotgun metagenomic sequencing enables high-resolution profiling of host-associated microbial communities. However, contaminant DNA can substantially distort biological interpretations, especially in low-biomass samples. Here, we introduce Metacontam, a control-free method for species-level decontamination of shotgun metagenomic data. Metacontam integrates blacklist-guided community detection within a species correlation network with average nucleotide identity (ANI) to identify contaminants ...