PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Edgar, Robert C. TI - SINTAX: a simple non-Bayesian taxonomy classifier for 16S and ITS sequences AID - 10.1101/074161 DP - 2016 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 074161 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/09/074161.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/09/074161.full AB - Metagenomics experiments often characterize microbial communities by sequencing the ribosomal 16S and ITS regions. Taxonomy prediction is a fundamental step in such studies. The SINTAX algorithm predicts taxonomy by using k-mer similarity to identify the top hit in a reference database and provides bootstrap confidence for all ranks in the prediction. SINTAX achieves comparable or better accuracy to the RDP Naive Bayesian Classifier with a simpler algorithm that does not require training. Most tested methods are shown to have high rates of over-classification errors where novel taxa are incorrectly predicted to have known names.