Estimating and mitigating amplification bias in qualitative and quantitative arthropod metabarcoding.

ABSTRACT: Amplicon based metabarcoding promises rapid and cost-efficient analyses of species composition. However, it is disputed whether abundance estimates can be derived from metabarcoding due to taxon specific PCR amplification biases. PCR-free approaches have been suggested to mitigate this problem, but come with considerable increases in workload and cost. Here, we analyze multilocus datasets of diverse arthropod communities, to evaluate whether amplification bias can be countered by (1) targeting loci with highly degenerate primers or conserved priming sites, (2) increasing PCR template concentration, (3) reducing PCR cycle number or (4) avoiding locus specific amplification by directly sequencing genomic DNA. Amplification bias is reduced considerably by degenerate primers or targeting ampli

SUBMITTER: Krehenwinkel H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5732254 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature