Quantifying spatiotemporal variability and noise in absolute microbiota abundances using replicate sampling.

ABSTRACT: Metagenomic sequencing has enabled detailed investigation of diverse microbial communities, but understanding their spatiotemporal variability remains an important challenge. Here, we present decomposition of variance using replicate sampling (DIVERS), a method based on replicate sampling and spike-in sequencing. The method quantifies the contributions of temporal dynamics, spatial sampling variability, and technical noise to the variances and covariances of absolute bacterial abundances. We applied DIVERS to investigate a high-resolution time series of the human gut microbiome and a spatial survey of a soil bacterial community in Manhattan's Central Park. Our analysis showed that in the gut, technical noise dominated the abundance variability for nearly half of the detected taxa. DIVERS a

SUBMITTER: Ji BW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7219825 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature