OTUer
An OTUer is a person who analyzes microbial sequence data by grouping sequences into operational taxonomic units (OTUs). OTUers typically work in microbial ecology, environmental sequencing, or metagenomics, using OTUs as a practical stand-in for species in diversity analyses. The term OTUer is informal and used primarily among practitioners rather than as a formal designation.
Core activities include quality filtering of reads, clustering sequences into OTUs according to similarity thresholds (commonly
History and evolution: OTU concept arose in the late 1990s as a pragmatic solution to species-level identification
OTUer community and impact: The work of OTUers supports studies of microbial diversity in soils, oceans, human-associated