Unknown vs. Unclassified

Theory behind mothur
1

Hello everyone,

I just had a terminology question for all of you.

What is the difference between unknown (as in, what the miseq SOP has you remove in remove.lineage) vs. unclassified (as in, I can see that some of my OTUs are classified with this term)?

Thanks for your help,

  • Jake
2

unknown= could not be classified to either the bacteria, eukarya, or archaea
unclassified= could not be classified to a genus