Programming language

Data science

Human microbiome

Biochemistry

Data visualization

Pure mathematics

Mathematics

Bioinformatics

Biology

Gene

Operating system

Data mining

Metagenomics

Visualization

Computer science

Human Microbiome Project

Computational biology

Field (mathematics)

Microbiome

Tracing

Software

Protein & Cell

Advances in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) have fostered rapid developments in the field of microbiome research, and massive microbiome datasets are now being generated. However, the diversity of software tools and the complexity of analysis pipelines make it difficult to access this field. Here, we systematically summarize the advantages and limitations of microbiome methods. Then, we recommend specific pipelines for amplicon and metagenomic analyses, and describe commonly-used software and databases, to help researchers select the appropriate tools. Furthermore, we introduce statistical and visualization methods suitable for microbiome analysis, including alpha- and beta-diversity, taxonomic composition, difference comparisons, correlation, networks, machine learning, evolution, source tracing, and common visualization styles to help researchers make informed choices. Finally, a step-by-step reproducible analysis guide is introduced. We hope this review will allow researchers to carry out data analysis more effectively and to quickly select the appropriate tools in order to efficiently mine the biological significance behind the data.

A practical guide to amplicon and metagenomic analysis of microbiome data