Differential richness inference for 16S rRNA marker gene surveys.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Individual and environmental health outcomes are frequently linked to changes in the diversity of associated microbial communities. Thus, deriving health indicators based on microbiome diversity measures is essential. While microbiome data generated using high-throughput 16S rRNA marker gene surveys are appealing for this purpose, 16S surveys also generate a plethora of spurious microbial taxa.

Results

When this artificial inflation in the observed number of taxa is ignored, we find that changes in the abundance of detected taxa confound current methods for inferring differences in richness. Experimental evidence, theory-guided exploratory data analyses, and existing literature support the conclusion that most sub-genus discoveries are spurious artifacts of cluste

SUBMITTER: Kumar MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9344657 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature