# Combine Feature tables to show OTUs and Frequency in a sample

**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/combine-feature-tables-to-show-otus-and-frequency-in-a-sample/1613
**Category:** User Support
**Tags:** otus, merge, feature-table
**Created:** [October 25, 2017, 4:36pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/combine-feature-tables-to-show-otus-and-frequency-in-a-sample/1613 "2017-10-25T16:36:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 5

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### Author: ![Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/nicholas_bokulich/32/19937_2.png) [@Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Nicholas_Bokulich)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2017, 5:20pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/combine-feature-tables-to-show-otus-and-frequency-in-a-sample/1613/5 "2017-10-25T17:20:32Z")

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Hello @Micro_Biologist,

> [@Micro\_Biologist](#):
>
> I am very new to qiime 2 and bioinformatics

Not a problem.

I will tackle your main question first, then circle back to the other questions/comments in your post:

> [@Micro\_Biologist](#):
>
> I am wondering if it is possible to combine the data from feature tables to show this?

It sounds like what you are looking for is [`feature-table merge`](https://docs.qiime2.org/2017.9/plugins/available/feature-table/merge/). That allows you to merge multiple feature tables into one, so long as those feature tables are already imported into QIIME as `FeatureTable[Frequency]` artifacts. Check out the other `merge-*` methods in [`q2-feature-table`](https://docs.qiime2.org/2017.9/plugins/available/feature-table/) to learn how to merge feature data (sequence or taxonomy) files.

> [@Micro\_Biologist](#):
>
> In short I am working on a pipeline to cluster OTUs in a sample and find out their relative frequency in that sample

I trust you have found [this tutorial](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/clustering-sequences-into-otus-using-q2-vsearch/1348) on using vsearch to cluster to OTUs (I realize that's not your question, just trying to point out relevant docs in case you haven't spotted them)

> [@Micro\_Biologist](#):
>
> To fit in with current protocol for now I will have to cluster to OTUs, as it needs to be comparable to an old method.

Perhaps I misunderstand — but you would still be able to compare sequence variants, e.g,. the output of dada2 and deblur, with OTUs. Sequence variants are in a sense OTUs clustered at 100% similarity. (you can also use `q2-vsearch` to cluster into OTUs following dereplicating/denoising with deblur/dada2, thereby getting the denoising benefits of these methods while still clustering into OTUs).

> [@Micro\_Biologist](#):
>
> I don’t have any actual data at the moment as we want to get the pipeline hypothetically working

Just to get a working pipeline any data would do — so the moving pictures data is fine. But for comparing your pipeline to older methods, you may want to consider using [mock communities](http://mockrobiota.caporasolab.us/) or other test datasets with known composition to assess how well your pipeline performs relative to another "gold standard" method.

> [@Micro\_Biologist](#):
>
> Many thanks for even reading this!

Of course! That's what we're here for.

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