Metagenomic raw reads are the direct, raw product of shotgun sequencing a community or environmental sample. They are the starting point for several kinds of analysis: reads can be assembled into longer contigs, compared or mapped against references, or taken into other downstream workflows. This session focuses on what information MGnify can help extract from sequencing reads directly, without first assembling them.We will look at how MGnify presents taxonomic and functional profiles, and how to find results through the website, API and MGnipy, its Python client. This session will lay the basis for the upcoming sessions about assembly and MAGs generation, and underline the pros and cons of using read-level evidence versus more complex approaches.This event is part of the webinar series “Making sense of metagenomics data with MGnify”. You can follow the link for more information about the series and its webinars.