DbOTU3: A new implementation of distribution-based OTU calling

Abstract

Distribution-based operational taxonomic unit-calling (dbOTU) improves on other approaches by incorporating information about the input sequences' distribution across samples. Previous implementations of dbOTU presented challenges for users. Here we introduce and evaluate a new implementation of dbOTU that is faster and more user-friendly. We show that this new implementation has theoretical and practical improvements over previous implementations of dbOTU, making the algorithm more accessible to microbial ecology and biomedical researchers.