Ecologically informed microbial biomarkers and accurate classification of mixed and unmixed samples in an extensive cross-study of human body sites

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The identification of body site-specific microbial biomarkers and their use for classification tasks have promising applications in medicine, microbial ecology, and forensics. Previous studies have characterized site-specific microbiota and shown that sample origin can be accurately predicted by microbial content. However, these studies were usually restricted to single datasets with consistent experimental methods and conditions, as well as comparatively small sample numbers. The effects of study-specific biases and stati Show more