obitools: a unix-inspired software package for DNA metabarcoding

Abstract

DNA metabarcoding offers new perspectives in biodiversity research. This recently developed approach to ecosystem study relies heavily on the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) and thus calls upon the ability to deal with huge sequence data sets. The obitools package satisfies this requirement thanks to a set of programs specifically designed for analysing NGS data in a DNA metabarcoding context. Their capacity to filter and edit sequences while taking into account taxonomic annotation helps to set up tailor-made analysis pipelines for a broad range of DNA metabarcoding applications, including biodiversity surveys or diet analyses. The obitools package is distributed as an open source software available on the following website: http://metabarcoding.org/obitools. A Galaxy wrapper is available on the GenOuest core facility toolshed: http://toolshed.genouest.org.

Keywords: PCR errors; biodiversity; next-generation sequencing; sequence analysis; taxonomic annotation.