Understanding bias in microbial community analysis techniques due to rrn operon copy number heterogeneity.

Abstract excerpt

Molecular tools based on rRNA (rrn) genes are valuable techniques for the study of microbial communities. However, the presence of operon copy number heterogeneity represents a source of systematic error in community analysis. To understand the types and magnitude of such bias, four commonly used rrn-based techniques were used to perform an in silico analysis of a hypothetical community comprised organisms from...

Topics

• DNA, Bacterial
• Databases, Genetic
• Gene Dosage
• Gene Expression Profiling
• Genetic Variation
• Information Storage and Retrieval
• Models, Genetic
• Models, Statistical
• Reproducibility of Results
• Sensitivity and Specificity
• Sequence Alignment
• Sequence Analysis, DNA
• rRNA Operon