16S rRNA Amplicon Sequencing Offers Enhanced Metagenomic Detection

Before the development of high-throughput methods to identify and characterize microbial populations, our understanding of the role microbes play in environmental, agricultural, and health-related settings was limited. ¬ e application of next generation sequencing (NGS) has provided an unprecedented ability to identify and categorize microbial taxonomy. Determining the complexity of species present in a sample can be achieved by sequencing a genomic region, conserved in all species, that contains evolutionarily divergent sequences that allow identifcation of unique taxa. A commonly used phylogenetic marker in metagenomics is the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene. ¬ is ubiquitous locus is comprised of highly conserved regions  flanking nine hyper-variable regions, referred to as V1-V9 (Figure 1). Here we demonstrate the utility of the NEXTflex™ 16S V1-V3 Amplicon-Seq Kit combined with the longer read chemistry of Illumina MiSeq (2x300) for enabling accurate identification of genera present in highly complex microbial communities across a vast number of samples.