Number of OTUs obtained from mothur analysis

Question

[dpc]

Hi friends!!! I have analysed gut metagenome 16S rRNA data with MOTHUR package. I am getting aroung 23,000 OTUs (cut off= 0.03) in my output file. Is such high number of OTUs abnormal?

Thanks and regards, DC7

[h.mon]

You don't provide details on 1) your experimental design; 2) primers used, sequencing platform, and quality of raw data; 3) how you performed the Mothur analysis (commands and parameters used). Without this information, it is very hard to speculate if the observed number of OTUs is reasonable or not.

That said, it does seem to me an exceedingly high number of OTUs.