In-situ metagenomics: A platform for on-field rapid sequencing and analysis of metagenomes in less than one day

We present a complete portable pipeline for sequencing and analysis of environmental metagenomes in less than a day. This unprecedented development was possible due to the conjunction of state-of-the art experimental and computational advances: a portable laboratory suitable for DNA extraction and sequencing with nanopore technology.The powerful metagenomic analysis pipeline SqueezeMeta, capable to provide a complete analysis in a few hours and using scarce computational resources. Finally, tools for the automatic inspection of the results via a graphical user interface, that can be coupled to a web server to allow remote visualization of data (SQMtools and SQMxplore). We tested the feasibility of our approach in the sequencing of the microbiota associated to volcanic rocks in La Palma, Canary Islands. Also, we did a two-day sampling campaign of marine waters in which the results obtained the first day guided the experimental design of the second day. We demonstrate that it is possible to generate metagenomic information in less than one day, making it feasible to obtain taxonomic and functional profiles fast and efficiently, even in field conditions. This capacity can be used in the further to perform real-time functional and taxonomic profiling of microbial communities in remote areas