Fig. 4

Comparison of mRNA vs. rRNA based abundance estimates. a Stacked bar graph measuring percentage distribution of total metatranscriptome activity by organism, with pairwise comparisons between mRNA and rRNA transcripts. To reduce potential mislabeling of organisms in the “long tail” of low-abundance organisms, only the top 30 most abundant organisms are displayed; other results are included in the purple “Other” catchall category. b The same measurement, expressed in total number of annotations per metatranscriptome sample. Due to a lack of ribodepletion, rRNA transcripts dominate all samples