WITHDRAWN Comparison of differential abundance analysis methods for microbiome data

Music City Center 

Differential abundance analysis is common goal of microbiome studies to uncover association between microbial composition and health conditions. Although many methods have been developed in recent years to analyze such data, there is no single method that performs uniformly better than others. Due to the zero inflation, over dispersion, and compositionality of the data, there is additional challenge in selecting appropriate methods. A few methods are based on Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests and T-test, while others are designed to address zero inflation and compositional effects. The methods can sometimes produce discordant results. Therefore, comprehensive evaluation of the methods, that covers many biologically relevant scenarios is extremely important to choose robust analysis method. We carry out comprehensive evaluation of the differential abundance methods using real data-based simulations data. Specifically, we evaluated methods, limma, edgeR, Aldex2, metagenomeSeq, ANCOM-BC, and LOCOM with respect to FDR and TPR. We found that, although none is robust and flexible, ANCOM-BC and LOCOM consistently work better as compared to other methods.

Differential abundance

composition

microbiome

zero inflation

metagenome

over dispersion 

Biometrics Section