Abstract: Disclosed herein are methods of identifying infections, such as methods of identifying bacterial infections which utilize whole metagenome sequence analysis to sequence the entire wound microbiome of clinical samples. The disclosed methods use fast k-mer based sequence analysis, predictive modeling, and Bayesian network analysis, to analyze bacterial metagenomic sequence compositions in conjunction with clinical factors to stratify communities of bacteria into healing versus non-healing clusters. The methods of identifying infections can include performing molecular analysis of a patient wound sample, preparing the data obtained from the molecular analysis, diagnosing the wound sample and/or prognosing the wound sample. The disclosed methods can also be used to identify protein function as well as novel biomarkers.

Abstract: Systems and methods for metagenomic analysis are provided. A method of metagenome sequence analysis of two or more samples can include (i) counting the abundance of each k-mer deconstructed from sequencing reads of nucleic acids in each sample, and (ii) using a vector space model to compute the genetic distance between each of the two or more samples according to the abundance of the k-mers. In some embodiments, counting includes (a) constructing a k-mer histogram containing the distribution of k-mers for each sample, and (b) dividing k-mers into partitions having approximately an equal number of k-mers based on the histogram, preparing an inverted index of the k-mers in each partition, and assigning a weight to each k-mer according to its abundance. Method of developing diagnostic and prognostic information using the methods of sequence analysis are also provided.

Abstract: Disclosed herein are methods of identifying infections, such as methods of identifying bacterial infections which utilize whole metagenome sequence analysis to sequence the entire wound microbiome of clinical samples. The disclosed methods use fast k-mer based sequence analysis, predictive modeling, and Bayesian network analysis, to analyze bacterial metagenomic sequence compositions in conjunction with clinical factors to stratify communities of bacteria into healing versus non-healing clusters. The methods of identifying infections can include performing molecular analysis of a patient wound sample, preparing the data obtained from the molecular analysis, diagnosing the wound sample and/or prognosing the wound sample. The disclosed methods can also be used to identify protein function as well as novel biomarkers.