Metabarcoding reflection
This weeks paper by Collins et al. (2019) was aptly chosen, I’d already read it! It was extremely relavant and informative in terms of methodologies other authors use to compare and contrast metabarcoding sets. Additionally, I think it was a great paper for people in the class to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different genes for sequencing and the issues that may arise when you’re trying to pick something that works best for your specific taxa or research interests. Something I’m curious about is why metabarcoding studies often only include in silico analysis rather than some actual lab testing of primer sets? This paper did both, but I often read in silico tests only. Is it due to cost of sequencing?
I am very excited for the discussion on bioinformatics, as I think it’ll loop in nicely with this week and provide some more topics to get people on similar grounds for discussion.