Articles by others on the same topic
16S ribosomal RNA is the ribosomal RNA of the small ribosomal subunit in bacteria and archaea. Together with ribosomal proteins, this RNA forms the small subunit's architecture, which positions messenger RNA for translation. The name refers to a sedimentation coefficient of about16 svedbergs: it is neither a count of subunits nor a length in nucleotides. The RNA molecule and the DNA gene encoding it are different molecules, even when a DNA sequencing assay is informally described as “16S sequencing”.[ref]
Structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit by B. T. Wimberly and others. Abstract: bacterial30S structure and its RNA–protein architecture
A structural example is the bacterial30S small ribosomal subunit: the2000 X-ray crystallography study of B. T. Wimberly and colleagues resolved its RNA–protein architecture at3Å resolution. At a different scale, 16S ribosomal RNA sequences can serve as inherited characters for phylogenetic analysis. The1977 study by George E. Fox and colleagues compared ribosomal RNA oligonucleotide cataloguing results from methane-producing organisms with those from other organisms, helping expose a deep evolutionary division.[ref][ref]
Classification of methanogenic bacteria by 16S ribosomal RNA characterization by George E. Fox and others. Abstract and pp.4537–4541: comparative16S characterization
A useful caution is that one genome need not contain just one16S gene, and its copies need not have identical nucleotide sequences. Silvia G. Acinas and colleagues explicitly measured this variation across sequenced genomes. As a hypothetical example, two distinct16S DNA sequences recovered from a sample could represent two organisms, or two copies in one organism. Counting distinct sequences therefore requires more interpretation than counting organisms.[ref]
Divergence and redundancy of 16S rRNA sequences in genomes with multiple rrn operons by Silvia G. Acinas and others. Abstract: intragenomic variation and copy-number effects