Deagle Bruce E, Jarman Simon N, Coissac Eric, Pompanon François, Taberlet Pierre
203, Channel Highway, Kingston, Tasmania, Australia
203, Channel Highway, Kingston, Tasmania, Australia.
Biol Lett. 2014 Sep;10(9). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2014.0562.
DNA metabarcoding enables efficient characterization of species composition in environmental DNA or bulk biodiversity samples, and this approach is making significant and unique contributions in the field of ecology. In metabarcoding of animals, the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene is frequently used as the marker of choice because no other genetic region can be found in taxonomically verified databases with sequences covering so many taxa. However, the accuracy of metabarcoding datasets is dependent on recovery of the targeted taxa using conserved amplification primers. We argue that COI does not contain suitably conserved regions for most amplicon-based metabarcoding applications. Marker selection deserves increased scrutiny and available marker choices should be broadened in order to maximize potential in this exciting field of research.
DNA宏条形码技术能够有效地表征环境DNA或大量生物多样性样本中的物种组成,并且这种方法正在生态学领域做出重大且独特的贡献。在动物宏条形码分析中,细胞色素c氧化酶亚基I(COI)基因经常被用作首选标记,因为在经过分类验证的数据库中,没有其他遗传区域能有覆盖如此多分类单元的序列。然而,宏条形码数据集的准确性取决于使用保守的扩增引物来回收目标分类单元。我们认为,对于大多数基于扩增子的宏条形码应用而言,COI并不包含适当保守的区域。标记选择值得更多的审视,并且应该拓宽可用的标记选择范围,以便在这个令人兴奋的研究领域中最大化潜力。