AUTHOR=Beckers Bram , Op De Beeck Michiel , Thijs Sofie , Truyens Sascha , Weyens Nele , Boerjan Wout , Vangronsveld Jaco TITLE=Performance of 16s rDNA Primer Pairs in the Study of Rhizosphere and Endosphere Bacterial Microbiomes in Metabarcoding Studies JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology VOLUME=7 YEAR=2016 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2016.00650 DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2016.00650 ISSN=1664-302X ABSTRACT=
Next-generation sequencing technologies have revolutionized the methods for studying microbial ecology by enabling high-resolution community profiling. However, the use of these technologies in unraveling the plant microbiome remains challenging. Many bacterial 16S rDNA primer pairs also exhibit high affinity for non-target DNA such as plastid (mostly chloroplast) DNA and mitochondrial DNA. Therefore, we experimentally tested a series of commonly used primers for the analysis of plant-associated bacterial communities using 454 pyrosequencing. We evaluated the performance of all selected primer pairs in the study of the bacterial microbiomes present in the rhizosphere soil, root, stem and leaf endosphere of field-grown poplar trees (