Leviathan: fast, memory-efficient, and scalable taxonomic and pathway profiling for (pan)genome-resolved metagenomics and metatranscriptomics.

Leviathan enables fast, memory-efficient, and scalable taxonomic and functional profiling at genome and pangenome resolution, outperforming traditional methods in resource use and accuracy.

• Why it matters: Understanding microbial functions alongside community composition is crucial for translating microbiome research into actionable insights, but current tools lack integrated, customizable, and efficient workflows for genome-resolved analysis.
• What they did: Leviathan combines Sylph for ultrafast, alignment-free taxonomic profiling with Salmon for pseudo-alignment-based read quantification against (pan)genome-resolved gene catalogs, providing pathway abundance and coverage metrics.
• The result: The tool demonstrated competitive classification performance with reduced resource requirements and enabled detailed functional and transcriptional analysis in case studies, facilitating insights into microbial metabolic and disease-related patterns.