BTW: Bioinformatics Through Windows: an easy-to-install package to analyze marker gene data

Abstract

Recent advances in Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) make comparative analyses of the composition and diversity of whole microbial communities possible at a far greater depth than ever before. This brings new challenges, such as an increased dependence on computation to process these huge datasets. The demand on system resources usually requires migrating from Windows to Linux-based operating systems and prior familiarity with command-line interfaces. To overcome this barrier, we developed a fully automated and easy-to-install package as well as a complete, easy-to-follow pipeline for microbial metataxonomic analysis operating in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)—Bioinformatics Through Windows (BTW). BTW combines several open-access tools for processing marker gene data, including 16S rRNA, bringing the user from raw sequencing reads to diversity-related conclusions. It includes data quality filtering, clustering, taxonomic assignment and further statistical analyses, directly in WSL, avoiding the prior need of migrating from Windows to Linux. BTW is expected to boost the use of NGS amplicon data by facilitating rapid access to a set of bioinformatics tools for Windows users. Moreover, several Linux command line tools became more reachable, which will enhance bioinformatics accessibility to a wider range of researchers and practitioners in the life sciences and medicine. BTW is available in GitHub (https://github.com/vpylro/BTW). The package is freely available for noncommercial users.