Perspectives from Ten Years of Protist Studies by High-Throughput Metabarcoding

Luciana Santoferrara; Fabien Burki; Sabine Filker; Ramiro Logares; Micah Dunthorn; George B McManus

doi:10.1111/jeu.12813

Perspectives from Ten Years of Protist Studies by High-Throughput Metabarcoding

J Eukaryot Microbiol. 2020 Sep;67(5):612-622. doi: 10.1111/jeu.12813. Epub 2020 Jul 2.

Authors

Luciana Santoferrara^{1

2}, Fabien Burki³, Sabine Filker⁴, Ramiro Logares⁵, Micah Dunthorn⁶, George B McManus²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
² Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton, CT, USA.
³ Department of Organismal Biology, Program in Systematic Biology, and Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
⁴ Department of Molecular Ecology, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
⁵ Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM), CSIC, Barcelona, Spain.
⁶ Department of Eukaryotic Microbiology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.

PMID: 32498124
DOI: 10.1111/jeu.12813

Abstract

During the last decade, high-throughput metabarcoding became routine for analyzing protistan diversity and distributions in nature. Amid a multitude of exciting findings, scientists have also identified and addressed technical and biological limitations, although problems still exist for inference of meaningful taxonomic and ecological knowledge based on short DNA sequences. Given the extensive use of this approach, it is critical to settle our understanding on its strengths and weaknesses and to synthesize up-to-date methodological and conceptual trends. This article summarizes key scientific and technical findings, and identifies current and future directions in protist research that uses metabarcoding.

Keywords: Biodiversity; biogeography; biological interactions; ecological patterns; function; phylogenetics.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Biodiversity*
DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic*
Eukaryota / classification*
Eukaryota / genetics
High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
Phylogeny*