MinION ribosomal RNA profiling

For this bio project, we profiled entire ribosomal operons from bacteria within our complex samples. These rRNA operons are amplified using domain-specific forward primers in the small ribosomal RNA subunit (16S), domain-specific reverse primers within the large rRNA subunit (23S), and a High Fidelity Taq polymerase. This rRNA operon profiling approach yields an amplicon containing both 16S/23S ribosomal subunits for phylogenetic assignment (4200 bp of sequence), plus the ITS region (500+ bp) containing species/strain information to distinguish various members within the microbial community.