Classification of Neisseria meningitidis genomes with a bag-of-words approach and machine learning

Autor: Marco Podda, Simone Bonechi, Andrea Palladino, Mattia Scaramuzzino, Alessandro Brozzi, Guglielmo Roma, Alessandro Muzzi, Corrado Priami, Alina Sîrbu, Margherita Bodini
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: iScience, Vol 27, Iss 3, Pp 109257- (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2589-0042
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109257
Popis: Summary: Whole genome sequencing of bacteria is important to enable strain classification. Using entire genomes as an input to machine learning (ML) models would allow rapid classification of strains while using information from multiple genetic elements. We developed a “bag-of-words” approach to encode, using SentencePiece or k-mer tokenization, entire bacterial genomes and analyze these with ML. Initial model selection identified SentencePiece with 8,000 and 32,000 words as the best approach for genome tokenization. We then classified in Neisseria meningitidis genomes the capsule B group genotype with 99.6% accuracy and the multifactor invasive phenotype with 90.2% accuracy, in an independent test set. Subsequently, in silico knockouts of 2,808 genes confirmed that the ML model predictions aligned with our current understanding of the underlying biology. To our knowledge, this is the first ML method using entire bacterial genomes to classify strains and identify genes considered relevant by the classifier.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals