UniFrac: Comparing Microbial Communities Presented by: Donovan Parks
Overview Motivating example Quick look at Bray-Curtis Index (BCI) UniFrac: distance measure, significance test, community tree, sequence jackknifing Contrast BCI and UniFrac
Why compare microbial communities?
Bray-Curtis Index (BCI): Distance Measure Measures the difference in OTU diversity between microbial communities.
BCI: Pros and Cons Pros: Cons: Simple (both conceptually and experimentally) Considers both richness and evenness # OTU in a Community Relative Abundance Cons: All clusters considered equally different
UniFrac: Distance Measure Measures the evolutionary distance between microbial communities
UniFrac: Significance Test Do two communities differ significantly?
UniFrac: Community Distance Matrix
UniFrac: Sequence Jackknifing How does the number and evenness of sequences from each community affect the results?
Weighted UniFrac What about the relative abundance of sequences (i.e., evenness)?
UniFrac: A Practical Look
Final Remarks: BCI vs. UniFrac They are different, equally valid measures! BCI: taxon-based method which considers richness and evenness UniFrac: phylogenetic-based method which considers evolutionary divergence Which to prefer depends on the questions you are trying to answer
Final Remarks: Many Ways to Compare Many richness and evenness measures (e.g., Jaccard, Sörensen) Other phylogenetic distance measures (e.g., TreeClimber) Many interesting and meaningful ways to compare microbial communities: Richness and evenness Evolutionary divergence Functional diversity
References UniFrac: BCI: TreeClimber (source of soil sample example): Lozupone C, Knight R, UniFrac: a New Phylogenetic Method for Comparing Microbial Communities, Appl. Environ. Microbiol., Vol. 71, December 2005. Lozupone C, Hamady M, Knight R, UniFrac - An Online Tool for Comparing Microbial Community Diversity in a Phylogenetic Context, BMC Bioinformatics, Vol. 7, August 2006. Online Tool: http://bmf2.colorado.edu/unifrac/index.psp (excellent help page) BCI: Bray R, Curtis T, An Ordination of the Upland Forest Communities of Southern Wisconsin, Ecological Monographs, Vol. 27, 1957. TreeClimber (source of soil sample example): Schloss PD, Handelsman J, Introducing TreeClimber, a test to compare microbial community structures, Applied and environmental microbiology, Vol. 72, No. 4., April 2006.