The truth about metagenomics: quantifying and counteracting bias in 16S rRNA studies.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Characterizing microbial communities via next-generation sequencing is subject to a number of pitfalls involving sample processing. The observed community composition can be a severe distortion of the quantities of bacteria actually present in the microbiome, hampering analysis and threatening the validity of conclusions from metagenomic studies. We introduce an experimental protocol using mock communities for quantifying and characterizing bias introduced in the sample processing pipeline. We used 80 bacterial mock communities comprised of prescribed proportions of cells from seven vaginally-relevant bacterial strains to assess the bias introduced in the sample processing pipeline. We created two additional sets of 80 mock communities by mixing prescribed quantities of

SUBMITTER: Brooks JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4433096 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature