An Introduction to the Statistical Issues in Analyzing Microbiome Data

• Activity Number: 671
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 13, 2015 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Glen Alan Satten*
• Companies: CDC

Abstract

High throughput sequencing has opened a new window through which we can learn about the microbial environment. Medical studies are studying the human microbiome (bacterial cells outnumber human cells in the body by a factor of 10), and promising preliminary results have been found in studies of obesity and preterm birth. Like most -omics data, microbiome data has its own strengths and weaknesses. In this talk I will describe the scientific and statistical issues that arise in analyzing and modeling microbiome data. Since many techniques come from analysis of data from Ecology studies, many of the approaches that are 'standard' may be new to statisticians who have not encountered these analyses before. The main goal of the talk is to give a context for the talks that follow.