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Cited by 278

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Polymerase chain reaction primers miss half of rRNA microbial diversity

Hong, SunHee, Bunge, John, Leslin, Chesley, Jeon, Sunok, Epstein, Slava S·2009·The ISME Journal

Abstract

The rRNA approach is the principal tool to study microbial diversity, but it has important biases. These include polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers bias, and relative inefficiency of DNA extraction techniques. Such sources of potential undersampling of microbial diversity are well known, but the scale of the undersampling has not been quantified. Using a marine tidal flat bacterial community as a model, we show that even with unlimited sampling and sequencing effort, a single combination of PCR primers/DNA extraction technique enables theoretical recovery of only half of the richness recoverable with three such combinations. This shows that different combinations of PCR primers/DNA extraction techniques recover in principle different species, as well as higher taxa. The majority of earlier estimates of microbial richness seem to be underestimates. The combined use of multiple PCR primer sets, multiple DNA extraction techniques, and deep community sequencing will minimize the biases and recover substantially more species than prior studies, but we caution that even this—yet to be used—approach may still leave an unknown number of species and higher taxa undetected.

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Metadata

Authors
Hong, S., Bunge, J., Leslin, C., Jeon, S., & Epstein, S. S.
Venue
The ISME Journal
Published
2009-08-20
Volume
3
Issue
12
Pages
1365-1373
ISSN
  • 1751-7362 (ISSN-L)
  • 1751-7370
OpenAlex
W1971536609
Cited by
278
References
36
FWCI
17.65
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Polymerase chain reaction primers miss half of rRNA microbial diversity. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/ismej.2009.89
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Hong, S., Bunge, J., Leslin, C., Jeon, S., & Epstein, S. S. (2009). Polymerase chain reaction primers miss half of rRNA microbial diversity. The ISME Journal. https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2009.89

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