Table 3. 16S rRNA gene primer pair information and in silico amplicon statistics.

*Primer pair has been used in previous ancient microbiome studies. ^aLength statistics obtained from SILVA SSU 111 database. ^bIn silico estimate using PrimerProspector⁴⁸ of the proportion of sequences in SILVA SSU 111 database (http://www.arb-silva.de) that the primer pair will amplify per phylum. Phyla are sequentially ordered from left to right by the number of species entries per phylum in the HOMD⁴⁰. ^cPrimer pair naming conventions have changed through time and are not consistent across studies. ^dPosition of primer start and stop coordinates relative to Escherichia coli Genbank accession J01695. Full primer sequences are provided in Supplementary Table 2. ^eReported for 99% CI of the SILVA SSU 111 database. Outliers, which may include chimeras, are excluded. ^fOTUs generated per primer pair by de novo clustering of the Silva 111.1 database at 97% similarity. The total number of OTUs generated from full 16S rRNA gene sequences is 138,462.