Analysis Of Main Otu Picking Methods By Bipartite Graphs

Abstract

Studies of ecosystems containing millions of microbial organisms, so called microbiomes, using DNA sequencing became very popular. The main step involves fast clustering of sequences belonging to the same operational taxonomic units (OTU) that represent the same or taxonomically related organisms. This step, known as OTU picking, can be performed by several techniques and significantly affects the final interpretation of the data. In this paper, a novel R/Biconductor package for microbiome data presentation using bipartite graphs is introduced while its benefits are demonstrated during comparison of 3 OTU picking techniques.