TwoMAGs

TwoMAGs is a term used in metagenomics to denote a pair of metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) recovered from the same environmental sample within a single study or analysis. MAGs are draft genome reconstructions created from shotgun sequencing data and subsequently grouped into bins that represent distinct organismal genomes. TwoMAGs, then, refers to two such genome bins that are reported together, often because they originate from the same sample, share similar assembly or binning signals, or are of related taxonomy.

In practice, TwoMAGs can arise during co-assembly of reads from a single sample or through binning approaches that leverage differential coverage across multiple samples. Binning tools and manual curation aim to separate contigs into coherent genome bins, and two MAGs may be presented together to enable direct comparison, functional annotation, or ecological interpretation. The term is not a formal taxonomic category but a practical descriptor used to discuss two reconstructed genomes identified in parallel.

Applications of TwoMAGs include comparative genomics to assess gene content and metabolic potential between closely related organisms, investigations of microbe–microbe interactions within a community, and quality assessments of bin completeness and contamination. Researchers should consider the typical caveats of MAGs, such as potential contamination, misbinning, and uneven genome completeness, when interpreting results derived from a TwoMAGs set.

See also: metagenome-assembled genome, genome binning, metagenomics, bin quality assessment.