Amount of data for metagenomic analysis

[cheezemeister]

Hello everyone

Just wondering if there is an amount of data that is generally considered acceptable for metagenomic analysis from 16S sequencing? Do I need >100,000 reads, or ? x number of Gb of data, for example?

Thanks!

[kiss9499]

According to the Illumina protocol, >100,000 reads per sample is enough.

[Brian Bushnell]

It really depends on the complexity of the community and how much of the low-abundance organisms you want to recover. There may not be a practical limit to how much you can sequence and still recover more, due to the exponential population distribution in many metagenomes.

[nucacidhunter]

I would add link for this paper: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/1306...srep01968.html