Additional file 2: Figure S2. of Composition and dynamics of the respiratory tract microbiome in intubated patients

Comparison of Illumina MiSeq and Roche/454 sequencing applied to identical samples. (A) Subjects 1–5 had upper and lower respiratory tract samples 16S rRNA gene sequencing performed on both the Illumina MiSeq and Roche/454 platforms. A heatmap displays family-level taxonomic assignment (as in Fig. 2). Vertical black lines separate each sample pair, allowing direct comparison of results obtained across the two sequencing platforms. (B) Procrustes analysis comparing weighted, normalized UniFrac distances calculated from the closed-reference OTUs formed from each sequencing platform. Balls indicate samples, colored by subject (red—subject 001, blue—subject 002, orange—subject 003, green—subject 004, purple—subject 005); edges connect the results of sequencing on Roche/454 and Illumina MiSeq platforms. Procrustes m2 was 0.13 (p < 0.001), suggesting similarity of the results across the two sequencing platforms. (ZIP 58.7 KB)