Fig. 4

Metatranscriptomics of NP samples from children with acute sinusitis identified organisms not detected byqRT-PCRor culture. The organisms included in the heatmap are a subset of the full set of organisms detected by RNA-seq that exceed minimum abundance thresholds and include human pathogenic bacteria and viruses (see Additional File: Table S7 for full dataset). The organisms are sorted vertically based on their maximum relative abundance within a sample (across 221 samples). The heatmap displays the relative abundance of each organism in each sample as estimated by Kraken 2. The left heatmap includes samples with clinically identified pathogens by qRT-PCR or culture (N = 202), and the right heatmap includes 19 samples without a pathogen detected by qRT-PCR or culture. For the latter samples, several samples contain additional organisms identified by metatranscriptomics that are plausible causes of sinusitis. The barplot on the right depicts the maximum relative abundance of each pathogen across all samples