An adaptive microbiome α-diversity-based association analysis method

Sci Rep. 2018 Dec 21;8(1):18026. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-36355-7.

Abstract

To relate microbial diversity with various host traits of interest (e.g., phenotypes, clinical interventions, environmental factors) is a critical step for generic assessments about the disparity in human microbiota among different populations. The performance of the current item-by-item α-diversity-based association tests is sensitive to the choice of α-diversity metric and unpredictable due to the unknown nature of the true association. The approach of cherry-picking a test for the smallest p-value or the largest effect size among multiple item-by-item analyses is not even statistically valid due to the inherent multiplicity issue. Investigators have recently introduced microbial community-level association tests while blustering statistical power increase of their proposed methods. However, they are purely a test for significance which does not provide any estimation facilities on the effect direction and size of a microbial community; hence, they are not in practical use. Here, I introduce a novel microbial diversity association test, namely, adaptive microbiome α-diversity-based association analysis (aMiAD). aMiAD simultaneously tests the significance and estimates the effect score of the microbial diversity on a host trait, while robustly maintaining high statistical power and accurate estimation with no issues in validity.

MeSH terms

  • Adaptation, Biological / physiology*
  • Animals
  • Biodiversity*
  • Computer Simulation*
  • Host Specificity / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Microbiota / physiology*
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Phenotype
  • Phylogeny
  • Research Design