Taxonomic affiliation of new genomes should be verified using average nucleotide identity and multilocus phylogenetic analysis

María José Figueras; Roxana Beaz-Hidalgo; Mohammad J Hossain; Mark R Liles

doi:10.1128/genomeA.00927-14

Taxonomic affiliation of new genomes should be verified using average nucleotide identity and multilocus phylogenetic analysis

Genome Announc. 2014 Dec 4;2(6):e00927-14. doi: 10.1128/genomeA.00927-14.

Authors

María José Figueras¹, Roxana Beaz-Hidalgo², Mohammad J Hossain³, Mark R Liles³

Affiliations

¹ Unitat de Microbiologia, Departament de Ciènces Médiques Bàsiques, Facultat de Medicina i Ciències de la Salut, IISPV, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Reus, Spain mariajose.figueras@urv.cat.
² Unitat de Microbiologia, Departament de Ciènces Médiques Bàsiques, Facultat de Medicina i Ciències de la Salut, IISPV, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Reus, Spain.
³ Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA.

Abstract

The average nucleotide identity (ANI) determines if two genomes belong to the same species. Using ANI, we detected mislabeled genomes and recommend verifying with ANI and multilocus phylogenetic analysis the species affiliations of the announced genomes. The slightly different results obtained with different ANI calculation software can potentially mislead taxonomic inferences.