Definition
MetaRank is a rank conversion scheme for analyzing microbial communities based on the relative order of member (taxonomic unit or functional group) abundances rather than their estimated values (e.g., proportions). It leverages a series of statistical hypothesis tests to compare member abundances within microbial communities and determine their ranks, providing an alternative rank-based method for characterizing metagenomes.
Introduction
Metagenomics is a field that involves sampling, sequencing, and analyzing the genetic material of microorganisms in microbial communities (Hugenholtz and Tyson 2008). A key question in metagenomics is whether and how changes in the microbial abundances of taxonomic units or functional groups relate to alterations of habitats (Hamady and Knight 2009). To characterize the relationship, it is important to compare microbial community compositions in different environments (Wooley et al. 2010).
Many statistical methods (e.g., Metastats (White et...
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Wang, TY., Tsai, HK. (2014). MetaRank: Ranking Microbial Taxonomic Units or Functional Groups for Comparative Analysis of Metagenomes. In: Nelson, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metagenomics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6418-1_807-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6418-1_807-2
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Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
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