Fig. 2

miRTrace determines the organismal origins of miRNA-seq data with high accuracy and sensitivity. a Representative miRNA-seq data from nine animal and five plant species were analyzed with miRTrace. The common species names are given below the bars. For each species, over 99% of the diagnostic clade-specific miRNAs were assigned to the expected clade, as shown by the bar color and the color key to the right. The total number of clade-specific sequencing reads in each dataset is shown above the bars. Sea cucumber and oyster (marked with black asterisks) were not represented in our reference database, but were still correctly identified as Echinoderm and Lophotrochozoan based on conserved sequences. b miRTrace identifies human samples as primate using data from single cells. c A parasitic infection is identified from nematode miRNAs in mouse serum. d Estimation of sensitivity. In a carefully controlled in silico experiment, fruit fly sequences were spiked into mouse data in abundances ranging from 0 to 100%. miRTrace detected the insect presence when 0.001% or more of the sequences were fruit fly