@article {Schloss042812, author = {Patrick D. Schloss}, title = {Application of database-independent approach to assess the quality of OTU picking methods}, elocation-id = {042812}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1101/042812}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {Assigning 16S rRNA gene sequences to operational taxonomic units (OTUs) allows microbial ecologists to overcome the inconsistencies and biases within bacterial taxonomy and provides a strategy for clustering similar sequences that do not have representatives in a reference database. I have applied the Matthew{\textquoteright}s correlation coefficient to assess the ability of 15 reference-independent and-dependent clustering algorithms to assign sequences to OTUs. This metric quantifies the ability of an algorithm to reflect the relationships between sequences without the use of a reference and can be applied to any dataset or method. The most consistently robust method was the average neighbor algorithm; however, for some datasets other algorithms matched its performance.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/08/042812}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/08/042812.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }