Toward accurate molecular identification of species in complex environmental samples: testing the performance of sequence filtering and clustering methods.

ABSTRACT: Metabarcoding has the potential to become a rapid, sensitive, and effective approach for identifying species in complex environmental samples. Accurate molecular identification of species depends on the ability to generate operational taxonomic units (OTUs) that correspond to biological species. Due to the sometimes enormous estimates of biodiversity using this method, there is a great need to test the efficacy of data analysis methods used to derive OTUs. Here, we evaluate the performance of various methods for clustering length variable 18S amplicons from complex samples into OTUs using a mock community and a natural community of zooplankton species. We compare analytic procedures consisting of a combination of (1) stringent and relaxed data filtering, (2) singleton sequences included an

SUBMITTER: Flynn JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4461425 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature