Quantitative Comparisons of 16S rRNA Gene Sequence Libraries from Environmental Samples

To determine the significance of differences between clonal libraries of environmental rRNA gene sequences, differences between homologous coverage curves, C(X)(D), and heterologous coverage curves, C(XY)(D), were calculated by a Cramér-von Mises-type statistic and compared by a Monte Carlo test procedure. This method successfully distinguished rRNA gene sequence libraries from soil and bioreactors and correctly failed to find differences between libraries of the same composition.