The effect of low-abundance OTU filtering methods on the reliability and variability of microbial composition assessed by 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing.

ABSTRACT: PCR amplicon sequencing may lead to detection of spurious operational taxonomic units (OTUs), inflating estimates of gut microbial diversity. There is no consensus in the analytical approach as to what filtering methods should be applied to remove low-abundance OTUs; moreover, few studies have investigated the reliability of OTU detection within replicates. Here, we investigated the reliability of OTU detection (% agreement in detecting OTU in triplicates) and accuracy of their quantification (assessed by coefficient of variation (CV)) in human stool specimens. Stool samples were collected from 12 participants 22-55 years old. We applied several methods for filtering low-abundance OTUs and determined their impact on alpha-diversity and beta-diversity metrics. The reliability of OTU detecti

SUBMITTER: Nikodemova M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10291178 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature