A Statistical Perspective on the Challenges in Molecular Microbial Biology

Understand

High throughput sequencing (HTS)-based technology enables identifying and quantifying non-culturable microbial organisms in all environments.

• Microbial sequences have enhanced our understanding of the human microbiome, the soil and plant environment, and the marine environment.
• All molecular microbial data pose statistical challenges due to contamination sequences from reagents, batch effects, unequal sampling, and undetected taxa.
• Technical biases and heteroscedasticity have the strongest effects, but different strains across subjects and environments also make direct differential abundance testing unwieldy.