Quantitative comparisons of 16S rRNA gene sequence libraries from environmental samples

To determine the significance of differences between clonal libraries of environmental rRNA gene sequences, differences between homologous coverage curves C-X(D), and heterologous coverage curves, C-XY(D), were calculated by a Cramer-von Mises-type statistic and compared by a Monte Carlo test procedure. This method successfully distinguished rRNA gene sequence libraries from soil and bioreactors and correctly failed to find differences between libraries of the same composition.