Visual exploration of microbiome data

ABSTRACT

A dramatic increase in large-scale cross-sectional and temporal-level metagenomic experiments has led to an improvedunderstanding of the microbiome and its role in human well-being. Consequently, a plethora of analytical methods has beendeveloped to decipher microbial biomarkers for various diseases, cluster different ecosystems based on microbial content,and infer functional potential of the microbiome as well as analyze its temporal behavior. Development of user-friendlyvisualization methods and frameworks is necessary to analyze this data and infer taxonomic and functional patternscorresponding to a phenotype. Thus, new methods as well as application of pre-existing ones has gained importance inrecent times pertaining to the huge volume of the generated microbiome data. In this review, we present a brief overview ofsome useful visualization techniques that have significantly enriched microbiome data analytics.