What Can We Learn about the Bias of Microbiome Studies from Analyzing Data from Mock Communities?

ABSTRACT: It is known that data from both 16S and shotgun metagenomics studies are subject to biases that cause the observed relative abundances of taxa to differ from their true values. Model community analyses, in which the relative abundances of all taxa in the sample are known by construction, seem to offer the hope that these biases can be measured. However, it is unclear whether the bias we measure in a mock community analysis is the same as we measure in a sample in which taxa are spiked in at known relative abundance, or if the biases we measure in spike-in samples is the same as the bias we would measure in a real (e.g., biological) sample. Here, we consider these questions in the context of 16S rRNA measurements on three sets of samples: the commercially available Zymo cells model communit

SUBMITTER: Li M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9601962 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature