| dc.description.abstract | Most of the world’s soil resources are of poor condition and with an expanding population it is important to improve soil management. Activities of microorganisms living in soil are essential for soil and plant health, and study of soil microorganisms can give important information of microbial diversity and function, which can give status of soil condition.
Next-generation sequencing give us the opportunity to study soil microorganisms at the most basic level. Illumina MiSeq is the most used sequencing platform. It provides a lot of data output but is limited by short read length. Oxford Nanopore MinION is the newest third generation sequencing technology which offers long-read sequences, but a main disadvantage is a relatively low read accuracy.
We used Illumina MiSeq and Oxford MinION to compare the taxonomic resolution of bacteria by sequencing of soil samples. Additionally, the soil samples were subject to different treatments: pesticide, fertilizer, pesticide*fertilizer and untreated, to see if it influenced the microbial community.
The two technologies got very similar results at both alpha- and beta diversity analyses. Application of fertilizer gave a significant effect on the microbial community at both technologies. Different phyla were dominating within the two sequencing platforms. Proteobacteria dominated with the MinION analysis, while Actinobacteria dominated with the Illumina MiSeq analysis. However, we conclude that there was not a difference in the taxonomic resolution between Illumina MiSeq and Oxford MinION. | |
