Embracing Ambiguity in the Taxonomic Classification of Microbiome Sequencing Data.

ABSTRACT: The advent of high throughput sequencing has enabled in-depth characterization of human and environmental microbiomes. Determining the taxonomic origin of microbial sequences is one of the first, and frequently only, analysis performed on microbiome samples. Substantial research has focused on the development of methods for taxonomic annotation, often making trade-offs in computational efficiency and classification accuracy. A side-effect of these efforts has been a reexamination of the bacterial taxonomy itself. Taxonomies developed prior to the genomic revolution captured complex relationships between organisms that went beyond uniform taxonomic levels such as species, genus, and family. Driven in part by the need to simplify computational workflows, the bacterial taxonomies used most co

SUBMITTER: Shah N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6811648 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature