Microbiome Analysis

Microbiome Analysis

Statistical Analysis of Microbiome Data with R

This unique book addresses the statistical modelling and analysis of microbiome data using cutting-edge R software. It includes real-world data from the authors’ research and from the public domain, and discusses the implementation of R for data analysis step by step. The data and R computer programs are publicly available, allowing readers to replicate the model development and data analysis presented in each chapter, so that these new methods can be readily applied in their own research. The book also discusses recent developments in statistical modelling and data analysis in microbiome research, as well as the latest advances in next-generation sequencing and big data in methodological development and applications. This timely book will greatly benefit all readers involved in microbiome, ecology and microarray data analyses, as well as other fields of research.

Novel Approaches in Microbiome Analyses and Data Visualization

High-throughput sequencing technologies are widely used to study microbial ecology across species and habitats in order to understand the impacts of microbial communities on host health, metabolism, and the environment. Due to the dynamic nature of microbial communities, longitudinal microbiome analyses play an essential role in these types of investigations. Key questions in microbiome studies aim at identifying specific microbial taxa, enterotypes, genes, or metabolites associated with specific outcomes, as well as potential factors that influence microbial communities. However, the characteristics of microbiome data, such as sparsity and skewedness, combined with the nature of data collection, reflected often as uneven sampling or missing data, make commonly employed statistical approaches to handle repeated measures in longitudinal studies inadequate. Therefore, many researchers have begun to investigate methods that could improve incorporating these features when studying clinical, host, metabolic, or environmental associations with longitudinal microbiome data. In addition to the inferential aspect, it is also becoming apparent that visualization of high dimensional data in a way which is both intelligible and comprehensive is another difficult challenge that microbiome researchers face. Visualization is crucial in both the analysis and understanding of metagenomic data. Researchers must create clear graphic representations that give biological insight without being overly complicated. Thus, this Research Topic seeks to both review and provide novels approaches that are being developed to integrate microbiome data and complex metadata into meaningful mathematical, statistical and computational models. We believe this topic is fundamental to understanding the importance of microbial communities and provides a useful reference for other investigators approaching the field.