Nanomotif: Identification and Exploitation of DNA Methylation Motifs in Metagenomes using Oxford Nanopore Sequencing

Abstract

DNA methylation is vital for understanding microbial biology, but a rarely used feature in recovery of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). Recently, Oxford Nanopore introduced all context methylation detection models. We leveraged this to develop Nanomotif - a tool for identification of methylated motifs in metagenomic contigs. We demonstrate how this enables MAG contamination detection, association of mobile genetic elements, and linking of motifs with the responsible methyltransferase directly from Nanopore data.