Intragenomic and intraspecific heterogeneity in rrs may surpass interspecific variability in a natural population of Veillonella.

As well as intraspecific heterogeneity, intragenomic heterogeneity between 16S rRNA gene copies has been described for a range of bacteria. Due to the wide use of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis for taxonomy, identification and metagenomics, evaluating the extent of these heterogeneities in natural populations is an essential prerequisite. We investigated inter- and intragenomic 16S rRNA gene heterogeneity of the variable region V3 in a population of 149 clinical isolates of Veillonella spp.