Metagenomics sequencing enables the study of genome diversity of an entire microbial flora (including non-cultivable bacteria) or micro-organisms present in a given sample.
Prokaryotic metabarcoding studies are mostly based on the prokaryotic 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing, which is a universal region of the prokaryotic ribosomal 30S subunit. The region is 1,500 bp long and contains 9 hypervariable regions interspersed between conserved regions. Sequencing this variable regions using universal primers allows the microbial taxonomic diversity identification, the structure of prokaryotic communities and their phylogenetic classifications within a sample.