Dataset Information

Improved resolution of bacteria by high throughput sequence analysis of the rRNA internal transcribed spacer.

ABSTRACT: Current high throughput sequencing (HTS) methods are limited in their ability to resolve bacteria at or below the genus level. While the impact of this limitation may be relatively minor in whole-community analyses, it constrains the use of HTS as a tool for identifying and examining individual bacteria of interest. The limited resolution is a consequence of both short read lengths and insufficient sequence variation within the commonly targeted variable regions of the small-subunit rRNA (SSU) gene. The goal of this work was to improve the resolving power of bacterial HTS. We developed an assay targeting the hypervariable rRNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region residing between the SSU and large-subunit (LSU) rRNA genes. Comparisons of the ITS region and two SSU regions using annotated bacterial genomes in GenBank showed much greater resolving power is possible with the ITS region. This report presents a new HTS method for analyzing bacterial composition with improved capabilities. The greater resolving power enabled by the ITS region arises from its high sequence variation across a wide range of bacterial taxa and an associated decrease in taxonomic heterogeneity within its OTUs. Although the method should be adaptable to any HTS platform, this report presents PCR primers, amplification parameters, and protocols for Illumina-based analyses.

SUBMITTER: Ruegger PM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4160368 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Improved resolution of bacteria by high throughput sequence analysis of the rRNA internal transcribed spacer.

Ruegger Paul M PM Clark Robin T RT Weger John R JR Braun Jonathan J Borneman James J

Journal of microbiological methods 20140715

Current high throughput sequencing (HTS) methods are limited in their ability to resolve bacteria at or below the genus level. While the impact of this limitation may be relatively minor in whole-community analyses, it constrains the use of HTS as a tool for identifying and examining individual bacteria of interest. The limited resolution is a consequence of both short read lengths and insufficient sequence variation within the commonly targeted variable regions of the small-subunit rRNA (SSU) g ...[more]

PMID: 25034229

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Project description:Designing primers for PCR-based taxonomic surveys that amplify a broad range of phylotypes in varied community samples is a difficult challenge, and the comparability of data sets amplified with varied primers requires attention. Here, we examined the performance of modified 16S rRNA gene and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) primers for archaea/bacteria and fungi, respectively, with nonaquatic samples. We moved primer bar codes to the 5' end, allowing for a range of different 3' primer pairings, such as the 515f/926r primer pair, which amplifies variable regions 4 and 5 of the 16S rRNA gene. We additionally demonstrated that modifications to the 515f/806r (variable region 4) 16S primer pair, which improves detection of Thaumarchaeota and clade SAR11 in marine samples, do not degrade performance on taxa already amplified effectively by the original primer set. Alterations to the fungal ITS primers did result in differential but overall improved performance compared to the original primers. In both cases, the improved primers should be widely adopted for amplicon studies. IMPORTANCE We continue to uncover a wealth of information connecting microbes in important ways to human and environmental ecology. As our scientific knowledge and technical abilities improve, the tools used for microbiome surveys can be modified to improve the accuracy of our techniques, ensuring that we can continue to identify groundbreaking connections between microbes and the ecosystems they populate, from ice caps to the human body. It is important to confirm that modifications to these tools do not cause new, detrimental biases that would inhibit the field rather than continue to move it forward. We therefore demonstrated that two recently modified primer pairs that target taxonomically discriminatory regions of bacterial and fungal genomic DNA do not introduce new biases when used on a variety of sample types, from soil to human skin. This confirms the utility of these primers for maintaining currently recommended microbiome research techniques as the state of the art.

Dataset Information

Improved resolution of bacteria by high throughput sequence analysis of the rRNA internal transcribed spacer.

Publications

Improved resolution of bacteria by high throughput sequence analysis of the rRNA internal transcribed spacer.

Similar Datasets

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