Question

Significance of 16s rrna in bacterial classification

Answer 1

The use of 16S rRNA gene sequences to study bacterial phylogeny and taxonomy has been by far the most common housekeeping genetic marker used for a number of reasons. These reasons include (i) its presence in almost all bacteria, often existing as a multigene family, or operons; (ii) the function of the 16S rRNA gene over time has not changed, suggesting that random sequence changes are a more accurate measure of time (evolution); and (iii) the 16S rRNA gene (1,500 bp) is large enough for informatics purposes (12). In 1980 in the Approved Lists, 1,791 valid names were recognized at the rank of species. Today, this number has ballooned to 8,168 species, a 456% increase