Culture-independent phylogenetic analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences has emerged as an incisive method of profiling bacteria present in a specimen. Currently, multiple techniques are available to enumerate the abundance of bacterial taxa in specimens, including the Sanger sequencing, the ‘next generation’ pyrosequencing, microarrays, quantitative PCR, and the rapidly emerging, third generation sequencing, and fourth generation sequencing methods. |