Figure 3

Community composition is captured by correctly reconstructed full-length SSU sequences. (a, b) Phylogenetic trees showing algorithm-reconstructed sequences (black diamonds) and their best blast hits, for both the simulated simple (a) and natural (b) microbial communities. Reconstructed sequences are presented with their (arbitrary) algorithm-assigned identifier and their prior probability, which serves as an abundance estimate, after the final round. All reconstructed sequences match to the expected organism in the simulated community (a), and all but two sequences match to metagenomic contigs assembled from traditional Sanger sequencing in the natural community (b). The two novel sulfobacilli in the natural community are presented with their closest blast hit in GenBank. Units are base substitutions per site, and bootstrap values ≥ 50 are shown at the branches.