Revealing the hierarchical structure of microbial communities

Revealing the hierarchical structure of microbial communities

Blog Article

Abstract Measuring the dynamics of microbial communities results in high-dimensional measurements of taxa abundances over time and space, which is difficult to analyze Dryer Fan Pulley due to complex changes in taxonomic compositions.This paper presents a new method to investigate and visualize the intrinsic hierarchical community structure implied by the measurements.The basic idea is to identify significant intersection sets, which can be seen as sub-communities making up the measured communities.

Using the subset relationship, the intersection sets together with the measurements form a hierarchical structure visualized as a Hasse diagram.Chemical organization theory (COT) is used to relate the hierarchy of the sets of taxa to potential taxa interactions and to their potential dynamical persistence.The approach is demonstrated on a data set of community data obtained from bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing for samples collected monthly from four groundwater wells over a nearly 3-year period (n = 114) along a hillslope area.

The significance of the hierarchies derived from the data is evaluated by showing that they Summer Dresses significantly deviate from a random model.Furthermore, it is demonstrated how the hierarchy is related to temporal and spatial factors; and how the idea of a core microbiome can be extended to a set of interrelated core microbiomes.Together the results suggest that the approach can support developing models of taxa interactions in the future.