Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Sep;4(3):138-148.
doi: 10.1016/j.gendis.2017.06.001. Epub 2017 Jun 23.

Hypothesis Testing and Statistical Analysis of Microbiome

Yinglin Xia  1   2 , Jun Sun  2
Affiliations

Hypothesis Testing and Statistical Analysis of Microbiome

Yinglin Xia et al. Genes Dis. 2017 Sep.

Abstract

After the initiation of Human Microbiome Project in 2008, various biostatistic and bioinformatic tools for data analysis and computational methods have been developed and applied to microbiome studies. In this review and perspective, we discuss the research and statistical hypotheses in gut microbiome studies, focusing on mechanistic concepts that underlie the complex relationships among host, microbiome, and environment. We review the current available statistic tools and highlight recent progress of newly developed statistical methods and models. Given the current challenges and limitations in biostatistic approaches and tools, we discuss the future direction in developing statistical methods and models for the microbiome studies.

Keywords: IBD; Vitamin D receptor; bioinformatics; biostatistics; cancer; diet; dysbiosis; hypothesis testing; inflammation; microbiome; obesity; statistical methods and models.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interests The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Dynamic Interactions among environment, microbiome and host for the research hypotheses in microbiome studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Clemente J.C., Ursell L.K., Parfrey L.W., Knight R. The impact of the gut microbiota on human health: an integrative view. Cell. 2012;148(6):1258–1270. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zhernakova A., Kurilshikov A., Bonder M.J. Population-based metagenomics analysis reveals markers for gut microbiome composition and diversity. Science. 2016;352(6285):565–569. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Peterson J., Garges S., Giovanni M. The NIH human microbiome project. Genome Res. 2009;19:2317–2323. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gevers D., Pop M., Schloss P.D., Huttenhower C. Bioinformatics for the human microbiome project. PLoS Comput Biol. 2012;8(11):e1002779. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sun J., Chang E.B. Exploring gut microbes in human health and disease: pushing the envelope. Genes Dis. 2014;1(2):132–139. - PMC - PubMed