Random sampling causes the low reproducibility of rare eukaryotic OTUs in Illumina COI metabarcoding.

ABSTRACT: DNA metabarcoding, the PCR-based profiling of natural communities, is becoming the method of choice for biodiversity monitoring because it circumvents some of the limitations inherent to traditional ecological surveys. However, potential sources of bias that can affect the reproducibility of this method remain to be quantified. The interpretation of differences in patterns of sequence abundance and the ecological relevance of rare sequences remain particularly uncertain. Here we used one artificial mock community to explore the significance of abundance patterns and disentangle the effects of two potential biases on data reproducibility: indexed PCR primers and random sampling during Illumina MiSeq sequencing. We amplified a short fragment of the mitochondrial Cytochrome c Oxidase Subunit

SUBMITTER: Leray M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5364921 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature