In the 2010s, I, Satoh, created a piece of software named OTUMAMi to visualize the microbial community structure data obtained from QIIME. In addition to visualizing data, OTUMAMi also had a function that automatically created and executed the basic commands used in QIIME. Later, around 2015, QIIME was replaced by QIIME2, and as the focus of my research changed significantly from understanding the microbial communities of wastewater treatment systems, OTUMAMi was put aside.
OTUMAMi's strength is that it provides straightforward and honest visualizations of data on microbial community structure. It has almost no statistical analysis functions like QIIME2. The graphical visualization is also very limited. However, it is possible to (1) for example, first display the composition at the phylum level, then expand only the phyla with relatively large amounts to the class level to investigate behavior, (2) arrange heat maps in two dimensions to view the relationship between experimental conditions and time series, or (3) display major bacterial groups in bar graphs according to taxonomy in combination with R. More than 10 years have passed since it was developed, but it seems that there is still no other software that can perform any of these functions. Perhaps it wasn't developed because there was no need for it, but I personally think that this kind of visualization is a method of expression that can be easily understood not only by experts but also by many people.
This time, we have made it possible to run OTUMAMi by importing data from QIIME2. We have also removed some less important functions, making it a little bit faster and easier to use.
Click here to download. You will need FileMaker Pro from Claris to run it.
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