GenBank mining reveals novel insights into Rhizobium phylogeny: Identical 16S rRNA sequences are mainly uncoupled from species designation, host plant, and geographic origin: How this search suggested the definition of a direct ‘microbial h-index’
Rosella Muresu, Monica Rodriguez, Andrea Squartini, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso · 2026
Read GenBank mining reveals novel insights into Rhizobium phylogeny: Identical 16S rRNA sequences are mainly uncoupled from species designation, host plant, and geographic origin: How this search suggested the definition of a direct ‘microbial h-index’ by Rosella Muresu, Monica Rodriguez, Andrea Squartini, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13567781.txt.
Description
Rosella Muresu, Monica Rodriguez, and Andrea Squartini mine GenBank to test how much a bacterial barcode really tells us, in a two thousand twenty-six microbiology paper. The 16S ribosomal RNA gene is the historical gold standard for identifying bacteria.
Across six thousand six hundred sixty Rhizobium sequences, identical barcodes usually carried completely different species names, host plants, and countries: two thirds of identical pairs disagreed on all three. One sequence appeared under dozens of hosts and names, likely because ecological genes move horizontally while the barcode evolves slowly. As a byproduct, the authors define a microbial h-index measuring how often a sequence recurs in databases, reaching two hundred one in their dataset.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Rosella Muresu, Monica Rodriguez, Andrea Squartini, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso, Luigimaria Borruso |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 110 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |