Fig. 3: Relative abundance of the four bacterial species in the mock-community determined by direct microscopic examination, CFU counts and mapping of mNGS reads to genomic sequences of the four mock-community members.

Microscopic cell counting and plating for CFU enumeration were determined separately for each species, prior to the creation of the mock community. In the mNGS analysis, porcine sequences were removed by CLARK to generate the input dataset. Reads were then aligned by USEARCH to the genomic sequences of the four mock-community members and the correction for genome size was performed. M, direct microscopic examination; C, CFU (colony forming unit).