Species- and genus-level resolution of various sequencing approaches.

Resolution was measured by the number of OTUs/clusters produced using UCLUST [21] at the species (97% identity) and genus level (95% identity) for 16S rRNA sequences in the Greengenes database, based on various end-sequencing (76 bases in length from either the 5′ or 3′ end) and shotgun-sequencing approaches and primer combinations. A higher OTU/cluster number indicates a theoretical higher level of resolution for taxonomic classification. The numbers in parenthesis provide the purity of clusters as measured by the percentage of clusters with homogenous taxonomy assignments in Greengenes. Entries with the highest resolution and/or purity for each sequencing approach are marked in bold. The primer sequences can be found in Table S4 in File S1.