An informative approach on differential abundance analysis for time-course metagenomic sequencing data

The advent of high-throughput next generation sequencing technology has greatly promoted the field of metagenomics where previously unattainable information about microbial communities can be discovered. Detecting differentially abundant features (e.g. species or genes) plays a critical role in revealing the contributors (i.e. pathogens) to the biological or medical status of microbial samples. However, currently available statistical methods lack power in detecting differentially abundant features contrasting different biological or medical conditions, in particular, for time series metagenomic sequencing data. We have proposed a novel procedure, metaDprof, which is built upon a spline-based method assuming heterogeneous error, to meet the challenges of detecting differentially abundant features from metagenomic samples by comparing different biological/medical conditions across time. It contains two stages: (i) global detection on features and (ii) time interval detection for significant features. The detection procedures in both stages are based on sound statistical support.