SILVA, RDP, Greengenes, NCBI and OTT — how do these taxonomies compare?

BACKGROUND: A key step in microbiome sequencing analysis is read assignment to taxonomic units. This is often performed using one of four taxonomic classifications, namely SILVA, RDP, Greengenes or NCBI. It is unclear how similar these are and how to compare analysis results that are based on different taxonomies. RESULTS: We provide a method and software for mapping taxonomic entities from one taxonomy onto another. We use it to compare the four taxonomies and the Open Tree of life Taxonomy (OTT). CONCLUSIONS: While we find that SILVA, RDP and Greengenes map well into NCBI, and all four map well into the OTT, mapping the two larger taxonomies on to the smaller ones is problematic. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-017-3501-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.