Improved resolution of bacteria by high throughput sequence analysis of the rRNA internal transcribed spacer

Current high throughput sequencing (HTS) methods are limited in their ability to resolve bacteria at or below the genus level. While the impact of this limitation may be relatively minor in whole-community analyses, it constrains the use of HTS as a tool for identifying and examining individual bacteria of interest. The limited resolution is a consequence of both short read lengths and insufficient sequence variation within the commonly targeted...