Fig. 1

Study overview and sample type composition. A total of 125 clinical body fluid samples were collected. Among these, thirty samples were used to compare cell-free DNA metagenomic next-generation sequencing (cfDNA mNGS) with whole-cell DNA metagenomic next-generation sequencing (wcDNA mNGS); forty-one samples were used to compare 16S rRNA gene NGS (16S rRNA NGS) with wcDNA mNGS; and all samples were used to evaluate the clinical performance of wcDNA mNGS was evaluated against culture results as a reference