A comparison of two culture and three sequencing methods for detection of the urobiome

In urine from pregnant participants screened for asymptomatic bacteriuria, PCR-free long-read shotgun metagenomics detected 528 species and provided the broadest species-level view.

• Why it matters: Standard urine culture misses much of the urinary microbiota, and enhanced culture and sequencing approaches have rarely been benchmarked side-by-side on the same specimens.
• What they did: Five methods—SUC, EQUC, short-read V4 16S, long-read near full-length 16S, and PCR-free long-read shotgun metagenomics—were applied to parallel urine aliquots from 188 participants.
• The result: Sequencing profiles resembled each other more than culture, SUC captured only a subset of taxa, and shotgun sequencing was the only method identifying Escherichia coli to species level.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.