Fig. 1

Culture-enriched molecular profiling captures the majority of OTUs. a The culture-enriched molecular profiling protocol. Fecal samples were cultured using 66 conditions and colonies were harvested from each plate. 16S rRNA gene sequencing of DNA extracted from colonies was compared with sequencing of the fecal sample. b OTUs from 16S rRNA gene sequencing of culture-enriched fecal samples were compared with those from culture-independent sequencing. The number of reads in the culture-independent sequencing of each sample is below the x-axis. The average proportion of OTUs cultured from each sample is shown; error bars represent standard deviation. c All OTUs from culture-independent sequencing of HV1 and HV2 samples were ranked by abundance and compared with OTUs detected by culture-enriched sequencing. Each point represents one OTU and the dashed line indicates 0.1 % relative abundance in the culture-independent sequencing. HV healthy volunteer, IBS irritable bowel syndrome