The MG-RAST application provides a comprehensive suite of services, including automated quality control, annotation, comparative analysis, and archiving for metagenomic and amplicon sequences. It utilizes a combination of various bioinformatics tools to achieve these functionalities. Originally designed for metagenomic data analysis, MG-RAST also extends support to amplicon sequences (16S, 18S, and ITS) and metatranscriptome (RNA-seq) sequences processing. However, it's important to note that MG-RAST currently lacks the capability to predict coding regions from eukaryotes, limiting its utility for eukaryotic metagenome analysis.
The MG-RAST pipeline can be segmented into five distinct stages: