Abstract

Advances in sequencing technology have played a critical role in our understanding of the microbial diversity on the planet. The qualitative assessment of microbial diversity began with the use of Sanger sequencing-based cloning-dependent approach in the late 20th century. The quantitative assessment of microbial diversity began with LIBSHUFF, which laid the foundation of statistical tools for microbial diversity studies. However, the development of high-throughput sequencing, such as 454 pyrosequencing, Ion Torrent, Illumina, Nanopore posed specific challenges for post-sequencing analysis. Today, researchers widely use Usearch, K-shuff, FLASH, MOTHUR, Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology (QIIME), Rtools, and many others along with many databases like NCBI, RDP, Greengenes, SILVA, and EzBioCloud for accurate taxonomic assignment of Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. In this chapter, the developments in sequencing technology, databases and analyses tools will be discussed. In addition, the current strategy which is used for the assessment of microbial diversity will be discussed briefly.

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