Perspectives for Consideration in the Development of Microbial Cell Reference Materials

Published

December 2, 2019

Author(s)

Emma Allen-Vercoe, J. R. Carmical, Samuel Forry

Abstract

Microbiome measurement and analyses benefit greatly from incorporation of reference materials as controls, however, there are many points to consider in order to define an ideal whole cell reference material standard. Such a standard would embody all of the diversity and measurement challenges present in real samples, would be completely characterized to provide 'ground truth' data, and would be inexpensive and widely available. This ideal is, unfortunately, not readily attainable because of the diverse nature of different sequencing projects. Some applications may benefit most from highly complex reference materials, while others will value characterization or low expense more highly. The selection of appropriate microbial whole cell reference materials to benchmark and validate microbial measurements should be considered carefully and may vary between specific applications. In this commentary, we describe a perspective on the development of whole cell microbial reference materials for use in metagenomics analyses, as gained through discussion of this topic by experts in the field at a recent workshop held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA.

Citation

Standards in Genomic Sciences

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-19-0557

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Keywords

Microbiome, Reference Materials, Measurement Confidence, Whole Cell

Citation

Allen-Vercoe, E. , Carmical, J. and Forry, S. (2019), Perspectives for Consideration in the Development of Microbial Cell Reference Materials, Standards in Genomic Sciences, [online], https://doi.org/10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-19-0557, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=925488 (Accessed May 21, 2026)

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