An integrated strategy for functional analysis of microbial communities based on gene ontology and 16S rRNA gene

Abstract

In order to analyse the similarity among microbial communities on functional state after assigning 16S rRNA sequences from all microbial communities to species. It's an important addition to the species-level relationship between two compared communities and can quantify their differences in function. We downloaded all functional annotation data of several microbiotas. It's developed to identify the functional distribution and the significantly enriched functional categories of microbial communities. We analysed the similarity between two microbial communities on functional state. In the experimental results, it shows that the semantic similarity can quantify the difference between two compared species on function level. It can analyse the function of microbial communities by gene ontology based on 16S rRNA gene. Exploration of the function relationship between two sets of species assemblages will be a key result of microbiome studies and may provide new insights into assembly of a wide range of ecosystems.