Taxonomic Profiling reports too few reads in low complexity samples

Issue description

When a single taxon is the most dominant constituent of a metagenomics sample, the Taxonomic Profiling tool of the QIAGEN CLC Microbial Genomics Module 20.1 removed the most abundant taxon, when it should not have. This problem is most likely to affect low complexity samples, that is, samples with 1 or very few taxa present, and that have varying read lengths in the input data. It is unlikely to affect high complexity samples.

Recommendations

1. Check if your analysis results are likely to have been affected by this problem.To do this, compare the total number of reads in an abundance table with the total number of reads mapping to the database in the Taxonomic Profiling report.  A large discrepancy would suggest the results are affected by this problem.
2. If your results have been affected by this problem, we recommend deleting them and re-running this analysis using QIAGEN CLC Microbial Genomics Module 20.1.1 and above.

Affected software

QIAGEN CLC Microbial Genomics Module 20.1

This issue was fixed in QIAGEN CLC Microbial Genomics Module 20.1.1.