The 16S sequence used in the phylogenetic study for prokaryotes
because:
- 16S rRNA genes are present in most of the prokaryotes as the
ribosomes os prokaryotes are not able to translate mRNA without
having the 16S rRNA component, so most of the prokaryotes have 16S
sequence
- Since these 16S Sequences are very essential, they are highly
conserved i.e, it is possible to create a tree by linking together
all the known prokaryotes or bacteria.
- The highly conserved nature of the 16S Sequences also helps in
the construction of universal primers which can be used to amplify
16S rRNA genes from widely divergent prokaryotes and easily obtain
an almost complete 16S rRNA gene sequence.
- There is a huge collection of 16S rRNA gene sequence
information in several databases as they were isolated easily and
they are publicly available and indexed for searching.
Thus, these characteristics help in providing enough data for
phylogenetic study to identify a prokaryote at least to the genus
level.