Method and system for improving amplicon sequencing based taxonomic resolution of microbial communities

Abstract

The taxonomic resolution obtained with conventional sequencing methods like Sanger (longer read lengths) takes a huge amount of time. While, NGS technologies (shorter read lengths) involves a lot of cost in sequencing. In addition to that the accuracy and depth of taxonomic classification is also less. A method and system for improving accuracy of amplicon sequencing based taxonomic profiling of microbial communities has been provided. The proposed strategy relies on obtaining taxonomic abundance profiles of a microbial community from two paired-end sequencing experiments, each of which targets different pair-wise combinations of non-contiguous (or contiguous) V-regions. The two taxonomic profiles are then combined based on (pre-estimated) accuracies of the individual V-regions (targeted in the experiments) in resolving each of the taxonomic groups under consideration.