Stochastic neutral modelling of the Gut Microbiota's relative species abundance from next generation sequencing data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Interest in understanding the mechanisms that lead to a particular composition of the Gut Microbiota is highly increasing, due to the relationship between this ecosystem and the host health state. Particularly relevant is the study of the Relative Species Abundance (RSA) distribution, that is a component of biodiversity and measures the number of species having a given number of individuals. It is the universal behaviour of RSA that induced many ecologists to look for theoretical explanations. In particular, a simple stochastic neutral model was proposed by Volkov et al. relying on population dynamics and was proved to fit the coral-reefs and rain forests RSA. Our aim is to ascertain if this model also describes the Microbiota RSA and if it can help in explaining the Mic

SUBMITTER: Sala C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4959352 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature