BMI Seminar with Amy Willis of the University of Washington

The composition of bacterial taxa in a microbiome is an important parameter to estimate given the critical role that microbiomes play in human and environmental health. We've shown through data analysis of artificially constructed microbiomes of known composition that high-throughput sequencing distorts the true composition of microbial communities. We propose a statistical model for microbiome data that reflects this observation, and algorithms to estimate model parameters.