Austin G. Davis-Richardson

For the original TaxCollector (publication), please check out the "publication" branch.

TaxCollector is a tool for modifying the Ribosomal Database Project (RDP) 16S rRNA database. The RDP database is a fasta file with 16S rRNA sequences. The headers are terribly non-descriptive. Using the NCBI names and nodes databases, this script can create detailed taxonomic descriptions.

For example, this script takes the default RDP header:

>S001018666 uncultured Acidobacteria bacterium; 2YMLF03; EF630306

And converts it to this:

>[0]Bacteria;[1]Acidobacteria;[2]Holophagae;[3]Holophagales;[4]Holophagaceae;[5]Geothrix;[6]Geothrix_fermentans;[7]Geothrix_fermentans[8]Geothrix_fermentans_(T)|U41563

Notice that the Genus is in "quotes." This means that there was no entry for Genus in the NCBI names and nodes databases. In this case, TaxCollector will make one up, recycling the previous name. This only happens for Genus and Order.

This can be useful for some people. For others, not.

By default, TaxCollector filters out entries with the following in their taxonomy:

'eukaryota'
'eukarya'
'clone'
'plasmid'
'vector'
'uncultured'

If you don't want this, change it in the taxcollector.py file

Type make. This will download necessary databases and compile you a taxcollector.fa file

invoke comme ca

python taxcollector.py names.dmp nodes.dmp input.fasta > output.fasta

You can get names.dmp and nodes.dmp from NCBI's FTP site.

My favorite way to do this is by typing

curl ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/pub/taxonomy/taxdump.tar.gz | gunzip | tar -xvf names.dmp nodes.dmp

The FASTA file must come from RDP (http://rdp.cme.msu.edu).

This software is distributed under the GNU GPL 2.0 software license.

Please Cite: Giongo A., Davis-Richardson A.G., Crabb D.B., Triplett E.W. TaxCollector: Modifying Current 16S rRNA Databases for the Rapid Classification at Six Taxonomic Levels. Diversity. 2010; 2(7):1015-1025.