Functional metagenomic analysis of airborne samples collected near Red Sea.

Airborne dust samples collected at the coastal and offshore regions of the Red Sea during December 2015 to November 2016 were all sequenced through Shotgun illumina sequencing. Individual samples were assembled using metaSpades and protein coding ORF genes predicted using MetaGeneMark. A non redundant gene catalog was developed through clustering of gene across samples. Protein sequence based taxonomic and functional assignments were summarized in a Gene Information Table (GIT) using Annotation Module in Dragon Metagenomic Analysis Platform (DMAP) at KAUST. Individual sample were mapped onto the common reference gene catalogue in order to find abundance of genes and corresponding GITs were indexed for easy online access and comparisons in DMAP Compare Module.