scholarly journals Variable selection in microbiome compositional data analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoni Susin ◽  
Yiwen Wang ◽  
Kim-Anh Lê Cao ◽  
M Luz Calle
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Variable Selection ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Penalized Regression ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Forward Selection ◽  
Computationally Efficient ◽  
Parsimonious Model ◽  
Microbiome Data ◽  
Log Ratio

Abstract Though variable selection is one of the most relevant tasks in microbiome analysis, e.g. for the identification of microbial signatures, many studies still rely on methods that ignore the compositional nature of microbiome data. The applicability of compositional data analysis methods has been hampered by the availability of software and the difficulty in interpreting their results. This work is focused on three methods for variable selection that acknowledge the compositional structure of microbiome data: selbal, a forward selection approach for the identification of compositional balances, and clr-lasso and coda-lasso, two penalized regression models for compositional data analysis. This study highlights the link between these methods and brings out some limitations of the centered log-ratio transformation for variable selection. In particular, the fact that it is not subcompositionally consistent makes the microbial signatures obtained from clr-lasso not readily transferable. Coda-lasso is computationally efficient and suitable when the focus is the identification of the most associated microbial taxa. Selbal stands out when the goal is to obtain a parsimonious model with optimal prediction performance, but it is computationally greedy. We provide a reproducible vignette for the application of these methods that will enable researchers to fully leverage their potential in microbiome studies.

scholarly journals Tree-Aggregated Predictive Modeling of Microbiome Data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Bien ◽  
Xiaohan Yan ◽  
Léo Simpson ◽  
Christian L. Müller
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Predictive Modeling ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Throughput Sequencing ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Taxonomic Rank ◽  
Microbiome Data

AbstractModern high-throughput sequencing technologies provide low-cost microbiome survey data across all habitats of life at unprecedented scale. At the most granular level, the primary data consist of sparse counts of amplicon sequence variants or operational taxonomic units that are associated with taxonomic and phylogenetic group information. In this contribution, we leverage the hierarchical structure of amplicon data and propose a data-driven, parameter-free, and scalable tree-guided aggregation framework to associate microbial subcompositions with response variables of interest. The excess number of zero or low count measurements at the read level forces traditional microbiome data analysis workflows to remove rare sequencing variants or group them by a fixed taxonomic rank, such as genus or phylum, or by phylogenetic similarity. By contrast, our framework, which we call trac (tree-aggregation of compositional data), learns data-adaptive taxon aggregation levels for predictive modeling making user-defined aggregation obsolete while simultaneously integrating seamlessly into the compositional data analysis framework. We illustrate the versatility of our framework in the context of large-scale regression problems in human-gut, soil, and marine microbial ecosystems. We posit that the inferred aggregation levels provide highly interpretable taxon groupings that can help microbial ecologists gain insights into the structure and functioning of the underlying ecosystem of interest.

scholarly journals Assessing Global Covid-19 Cases Data through Compositional Data Analysis(CoDa)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis P.V. Braga ◽  
Dina Feigenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Discrete Groups ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Cumulative Number ◽  
Governmental Agencies ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Number Of Patients ◽  
Log Ratio

AbstractBackgroundCovid-19 cases data pose an enormous challenge to any analysis. The evaluation of such a global pandemic requires matching reports that follow different procedures and even overcoming some countries’ censorship that restricts publications.MethodsThis work proposes a methodology that could assist future studies. Compositional Data Analysis (CoDa) is proposed as the proper approach as Covid-19 cases data is compositional in nature. Under this methodology, for each country three attributes were selected: cumulative number of deaths (D); cumulative number of recovered patients(R); present number of patients (A).ResultsAfter the operation called closure, with c=1, a ternary diagram and Log-Ratio plots, as well as, compositional statistics are presented. Cluster analysis is then applied, splitting the countries into discrete groups.ConclusionsThis methodology can also be applied to other data sets such as countries, cities, provinces or districts in order to help authorities and governmental agencies to improve their actions to fight against a pandemic.

scholarly journals A field guide for the compositional analysis of any-omics data

GigaScience ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas P Quinn ◽  
Ionas Erb ◽  
Greg Gloor ◽  
Cedric Notredame ◽  
Mark F Richardson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
General Solution ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Compositional Analysis ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Nucleotide Synthesis ◽  
Library Size ◽  
Next Generation Sequencing Ngs ◽  
Concise Guide ◽  
Log Ratio

Abstract Background Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has made it possible to determine the sequence and relative abundance of all nucleotides in a biological or environmental sample. A cornerstone of NGS is the quantification of RNA or DNA presence as counts. However, these counts are not counts per se: their magnitude is determined arbitrarily by the sequencing depth, not by the input material. Consequently, counts must undergo normalization prior to use. Conventional normalization methods require a set of assumptions: they assume that the majority of features are unchanged and that all environments under study have the same carrying capacity for nucleotide synthesis. These assumptions are often untestable and may not hold when heterogeneous samples are compared. Results Methods developed within the field of compositional data analysis offer a general solution that is assumption-free and valid for all data. Herein, we synthesize the extant literature to provide a concise guide on how to apply compositional data analysis to NGS count data. Conclusions In highlighting the limitations of total library size, effective library size, and spike-in normalizations, we propose the log-ratio transformation as a general solution to answer the question, “Relative to some important activity of the cell, what is changing?”

scholarly journals Compositional analysis: a valid approach to analyze microbiome high-throughput sequencing data

2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (8) ◽  
pp. 692-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory B. Gloor ◽  
Gregor Reid
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Sequencing ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Sequencing Data ◽  
Microbiome Data

A workshop held at the 2015 annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists highlighted compositional data analysis methods and the importance of exploratory data analysis for the analysis of microbiome data sets generated by high-throughput DNA sequencing. A summary of the content of that workshop, a review of new methods of analysis, and information on the importance of careful analyses are presented herein. The workshop focussed on explaining the rationale behind the use of compositional data analysis, and a demonstration of these methods for the examination of 2 microbiome data sets. A clear understanding of bioinformatics methodologies and the type of data being analyzed is essential, given the growing number of studies uncovering the critical role of the microbiome in health and disease and the need to understand alterations to its composition and function following intervention with fecal transplant, probiotics, diet, and pharmaceutical agents.

scholarly journals An application of compositional data analysis to multiomic time-series data

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sisk-Hackworth ◽  
Scott T Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Time Series Data ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Metabolomics Data ◽  
Normalization Methods ◽  
Next Generation Sequencing Ngs ◽  
Ngs Data ◽  
Log Ratio

Abstract Compositional data analysis (CoDA) methods have increased in popularity as a new framework for analyzing next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. CoDA methods, such as the centered log-ratio (clr) transformation, adjust for the compositional nature of NGS counts, which is not addressed by traditional normalization methods. CoDA has only been sparsely applied to NGS data generated from microbial communities or to multiple ‘omics’ datasets. In this study, we applied CoDA methods to analyze NGS and untargeted metabolomic datasets obtained from bacterial and fungal communities. Specifically, we used clr transformation to reanalyze NGS amplicon and metabolomics data from a study investigating the effects of building material type, moisture and time on microbial and metabolomic diversity. Compared to analysis of untransformed data, analysis of clr-transformed data revealed novel relationships and stronger associations between sample conditions and microbial and metabolic community profiles.

scholarly journals Tree-aggregated predictive modeling of microbiome data

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Bien ◽  
Xiaohan Yan ◽  
Léo Simpson ◽  
Christian L. Müller
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Predictive Modeling ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Throughput Sequencing ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Taxonomic Rank ◽  
Microbiome Data

AbstractModern high-throughput sequencing technologies provide low-cost microbiome survey data across all habitats of life at unprecedented scale. At the most granular level, the primary data consist of sparse counts of amplicon sequence variants or operational taxonomic units that are associated with taxonomic and phylogenetic group information. In this contribution, we leverage the hierarchical structure of amplicon data and propose a data-driven and scalable tree-guided aggregation framework to associate microbial subcompositions with response variables of interest. The excess number of zero or low count measurements at the read level forces traditional microbiome data analysis workflows to remove rare sequencing variants or group them by a fixed taxonomic rank, such as genus or phylum, or by phylogenetic similarity. By contrast, our framework, which we call  (ee-ggregation of ompositional data), learns data-adaptive taxon aggregation levels for predictive modeling, greatly reducing the need for user-defined aggregation in preprocessing while simultaneously integrating seamlessly into the compositional data analysis framework. We illustrate the versatility of our framework in the context of large-scale regression problems in human gut, soil, and marine microbial ecosystems. We posit that the inferred aggregation levels provide highly interpretable taxon groupings that can help microbiome researchers gain insights into the structure and functioning of the underlying ecosystem of interest.

scholarly journals propr: An R-package for Identifying Proportionally Abundant Features Using Compositional Data Analysis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Quinn ◽  
Mark F. Richardson ◽  
David Lovell ◽  
Tamsyn Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Relative Abundance ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Genomic Data ◽  
R Package ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Computationally Efficient ◽  
Abundance Data ◽  
Relative Abundances

AbstractIn the life sciences, many assays measure only the relative abundances of components for each sample. These data, called compositional data, require special handling in order to avoid misleading conclusions. For example, in the case of correlation, treating relative data like absolute data can lead to the discovery of falsely positive associations. Recently, researchers have proposed proportionality as a valid alternative to correlation for calculating pairwise association in relative data. Although the question of how to best measure proportionality remains open, we present here a computationally efficient R package that implements two proposed measures of proportionality. In an effort to advance the understanding and application of proportionality analysis, we review the mathematics behind proportionality, demonstrate its application to genomic data, and discuss some ongoing challenges in the analysis of relative abundance data.

scholarly journals A field guide for the compositional analysis of any-omics data

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas P. Quinn ◽  
Ionas Erb ◽  
Greg Gloor ◽  
Cedric Notredame ◽  
Mark F. Richardson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
General Solution ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Compositional Analysis ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Sequencing Data ◽  
Nucleotide Synthesis ◽  
Library Size ◽  
Concise Guide ◽  
Log Ratio

AbstractNext-generation sequencing (NGS) has made it possible to determine the sequence and relative abundance of all nucleotides in a biological or environmental sample. Today, NGS is routinely used to understand many important topics in biology from human disease to microorganism diversity. A cornerstone of NGS is the quantification of RNA or DNA presence as counts. However, these counts are not counts per se: the magnitude of the counts are determined arbitrarily by the sequencing depth, not by the input material. Consequently, counts must undergo normalization prior to use. Conventional normalization methods require a set of assumptions: they assume that the majority of features are unchanged, and that all environments under study have the same carrying capacity for nucleotide synthesis. These assumptions are often untestable and may not hold when comparing heterogeneous samples (e.g., samples collected across distinct cancers or tissues). Instead, methods developed within the field of compositional data analysis offer a general solution that is assumption-free and valid for all data. In this manuscript, we synthesize the extant literature to provide a concise guide on how to apply compositional data analysis to NGS count data. In doing so, we review zero replacement, differential abundance analysis, and within-group and between-group coordination analysis. We then discuss how this pipeline can accommodate complex study design, facilitate the analysis of vertically and horizontally integrated data, including multiomics data, and further extend to single-cell sequencing data. In highlighting the limitations of total library size, effective library size, and spike-in normalizations, we propose the log-ratio transformation as a general solution to answer the question, “Relative to some important activity of the cell, what is changing?”. Taken together, this manuscript establishes the first fully comprehensive analysis protocol that is suitable for any and all -omics data.

scholarly journals Zero problems with compositional data of physical behaviors: a comparison of three zero replacement methods

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Lund Rasmussen ◽  
Javier Palarea-Albaladejo ◽  
Melker Staffan Johansson ◽  
Patrick Crowley ◽  
Matthew Leigh Stevens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Time Use ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Accelerometer Data ◽  
Relative Variation ◽  
Physical Behavior ◽  
Complete Dataset ◽  
Log Ratio

Abstract Background Researchers applying compositional data analysis to time-use data (e.g., time spent in physical behaviors) often face the problem of zeros, that is, recordings of zero time spent in any of the studied behaviors. Zeros hinder the application of compositional data analysis because the analysis is based on log-ratios. One way to overcome this challenge is to replace the zeros with sensible small values. The aim of this study was to compare the performance of three existing replacement methods used within physical behavior time-use epidemiology: simple replacement, multiplicative replacement, and log-ratio expectation-maximization (lrEM) algorithm. Moreover, we assessed the consequence of choosing replacement values higher than the lowest observed value for a given behavior. Method Using a complete dataset based on accelerometer data from 1310 Danish adults as reference, multiple datasets were simulated across six scenarios of zeros (5–30% zeros in 5% increments). Moreover, four examples were produced based on real data, in which, 10 and 20% zeros were imposed and replaced using a replacement value of 0.5 min, 65% of the observation threshold, or an estimated value below the observation threshold. For the simulation study and the examples, the zeros were replaced using the three replacement methods and the degree of distortion introduced was assessed by comparison with the complete dataset. Results The lrEM method outperformed the other replacement methods as it had the smallest influence on the structure of relative variation of the datasets. Both the simple and multiplicative replacements introduced higher distortion, particularly in scenarios with more than 10% zeros; although the latter, like the lrEM, does preserve the ratios between behaviors with no zeros. The examples revealed that replacing zeros with a value higher than the observation threshold severely affected the structure of relative variation. Conclusions Given our findings, we encourage the use of replacement methods that preserve the relative structure of physical behavior data, as achieved by the multiplicative and lrEM replacements, and to avoid simple replacement. Moreover, we do not recommend replacing zeros with values higher than the lowest observed value for a behavior.

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