mockrobiota: a Public Resource for Microbiome Bioinformatics Benchmarking

Area of Science:

• Microbial ecology
• Bioinformatics
• Computational biology

Background:

• Mock communities are essential for validating and optimizing bioinformatics tools used in microbial community analysis.
• Standardized data resources are needed to facilitate method comparisons, enhance transparency, and reduce redundancy in omics research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce mockrobiota, a public resource for sharing, validating, and documenting mock community data.
• To provide a centralized platform for accessing metadata, expected compositions, and links to raw data for various mock communities.

Main Methods:

• The mockrobiota resource aggregates data sets and sample metadata, including expected compositions (taxonomy, gene annotations, reference sequences).
• It links to raw sequencing data for 11 diverse mock community data sets (bacterial, archaeal, eukaryotic) analyzed by high-throughput marker gene sequencing.

Main Results:

• Mockrobiota currently hosts 11 mock community data sets with known species compositions.
• The resource provides metadata indicating the availability of physical sample materials for each community.

Conclusions:

• Mockrobiota facilitates method optimization, cross-study comparisons, and improves transparency and accessibility in microbial community analysis.
• This dynamic resource serves as a valuable tool for bioinformatics education and training, aiming to evolve with the needs of the omics community.