Metagenomic biomarker discovery and explanation

Abstract

This study describes and validates a new method for metagenomic biomarker discovery by way of class comparison, tests of biological consistency and effect size estimation. This addresses the challenge of finding organisms, genes, or pathways that consistently explain the differences between two or more microbial communities, which is a central problem to the study of metagenomics. We extensively validate our method on several microbiomes and a convenient online interface for the method is provided at http://huttenhower.sph.harvard.edu/lefse/.National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (U.S.) (grant DE017106)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH grant AI078942)Burroughs Wellcome FundNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH 1R01HG005969