Machine Learning for detection of viral sequences in human metagenomic datasets.

Journal: BMC bioinformatics
Published Date:

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Detection of highly divergent or yet unknown viruses from metagenomics sequencing datasets is a major bioinformatics challenge. When human samples are sequenced, a large proportion of assembled contigs are classified as "unknown", as conventional methods find no similarity to known sequences. We wished to explore whether machine learning algorithms using Relative Synonymous Codon Usage frequency (RSCU) could improve the detection of viral sequences in metagenomic sequencing data.

Authors

  • Zurab Bzhalava
    Dept. of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, F46, Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge, Stockholm, Sweden.
  • Ardi Tampuu
    Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
  • Piotr Bała
    Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
  • Raul Vicente
    Computational Neuroscience Lab, Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
  • Joakim Dillner
    Dept. of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, F46, Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge, Stockholm, Sweden. joakim.dillner@ki.se.