ASaiM: a Galaxy-based framework to analyze raw shotgun data from microbiota

New generation of sequencing platforms coupled to numerous bioinformatics tools has led to rapid technological progress in metagenomics and metatranscriptomics to investigate complex microorganism communities. Nevertheless, a combination of different bioinformatic tools remains necessary to draw conclusions out of microbiota studies. Modular and user-friendly tools would greatly improve such studies. We therefore developed ASaiM, an Open-Source Galaxy-based framework dedicated to microbiota data analyses. ASaiM provides a curated collection of tools to explore and visualize taxonomic and functional information from raw amplicon, metagenomic or metatranscriptomic sequences. To guide different analyses, several customizable workflows are included. All workflows are supported by tutorials and Galaxy interactive tours to guide the users through the analyses step by step. ASaiM is implemented as Galaxy Docker flavour. It is scalable to many thousand datasets, but also can be used a normal PC. The associated source code is available under Apache 2 license at https://github.com/ASaiM/framework and documentation can be found online (http://asaim.readthedocs.io/). Based on the Galaxy framework, ASaiM offers sophisticated analyses to scientists without command-line knowledge. ASaiM provides a powerful framework to easily and quickly explore microbiota data in a reproducible and transparent environment.