Chapter 14 Microbiome data analysis
Microbiome data analysis requires working with two separate subtypes of data: the taxonomic data and the sample (meta)data. Taxonomic data is hierarchical, meaning that the data are structured in tiers. These tiers are typically the Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs). The sample data is the data describing the observations (people or subjects) in the data, and often includes demographic/clinical features.