Introducing mothur: open-source, platform-independent, community-supported software for describing and comparing microbial communities.
mothur aims to be a comprehensive software package that allows users to use a single piece of software to analyze community sequence data. It builds upon previous tools to provide a flexible and powerful software package for analyzing sequencing data. As a case study, we used mothur to trim, screen, and align sequences; calculate distances; assign sequences to operational taxonomic units; and describe the alpha and beta diversity of eight marine samples previously characterized by pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene fragments. This analysis of more than 222,000 sequences was completed in less than 2 h with a laptop computer.
Schloss
Patrick D
PD
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. pschloss@umich.edu
Westcott
Sarah L
SL
Ryabin
Thomas
T
Hall
Justine R
JR
Hartmann
Martin
M
Hollister
Emily B
EB
Lesniewski
Ryan A
RA
Oakley
Brian B
BB
Parks
Donovan H
DH
Robinson
Courtney J
CJ
Sahl
Jason W
JW
Stres
Blaz
B
Thallinger
Gerhard G
GG
Van Horn
David J
DJ
Weber
Carolyn F
CF
D044822:Biodiversity; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D004783:Environmental Microbiology; D056186:Metagenomics / Q000379:methods*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012984:Software