Gut microbes play a key role in colorectal carcinogenesis, yet reaching a consensus on which microbes remains challenging in part due to  reliance on mean value estimates. We present an extreme value analysis for overcoming these limitations. By characterizing a power law fit to the relative abundances of microbes, we capture the same microbial signatures as more complex meta-analyses. Importantly, we show that our method is robust to the variations inherent in microbial community profiling and point to future directions for developing sensitive, robust analytical methods.
Gut microbes play a key role in colorectal carcinogenesis, yet reaching a consensus on microbial signatures remains a challenge. This is in part due to a reliance on mean value estimates. We present an extreme value analysis for overcoming these limitations. By characterizing a power law fit to the relative abundances of microbes, we capture the same microbial signatures as more complex meta-analyses. Importantly, we show that our method is robust to the variations inherent in microbial community profiling and point to future directions for developing sensitive, reliable analytical methods.
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which microbes remains challenging
microbial signatures remains a challenge. This is
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a
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robust
reliable