Bioinformatics Commons^™

Genome Jigsaw: Implications Of 16s Ribosomal Rna Gene Fragment Position For Bacterial Species Identification, Jennifer Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The 16S rRNA gene is present within all bacteria, and contains nine variable regions interspersed within conserved regions of the gene. While conserved regions remain mostly constant over time, variable regions can be used for taxonomic identification purposes. Current methodologies for characterizing microbial communities, such as those used to study the human microbiome, involve sequencing short fragments of this ubiquitous gene, and comparing these fragments to reference sequences in databases to identify the microbes present. Traditionally, whole 16S rRNA sequences with more than 97% sequence identity (id) are assigned to a single operational taxonomic unit (OTUs); each OTU being a …