Latitude in sample handling and storage for infant faecal microbiota studies: the elephant in the room?

Microbiome

Table 3 OTUs in the simple community dataset that displayed differential abundances over the course of two weeks of storage at room temperature

	Mean reads (% of dataset total) at:						Significant after a MHC?
OTU	4 h	2 weeks	Exponentiated coefficient	2.5 % CI	97.5 % CI	P value	Significant after a MHC?
Enterococcus	26.61	34.00	1.0008	1.0001	1.0015	0.034	No
Bifidobacterium	7.15	10.78	1.0028	1.0010	1.0046	0.002	Yes
Veillonella1	7.06	1.12	0.9936	0.9903	0.9968	<0.001	Yes
Veillonella2	2.03	0.09	0.9892	0.9868	0.9916	<0.001	Yes

The OTUs shown shift significantly in relative abundance in the simple faecal community dataset over 2 weeks of storage at room temperature. Mean sequencing reads in the samples stored for 4 h and those stored for 2 weeks are shown. The exponentiated coefficients were provided by the GLMs and approximate the rate of change of relative abundance for each OTU per hour of storage; 2.5 and 95 % CI indicate the 95 % confidence interval around the exponentiated coefficient. P values indicate the significance of the coefficient (prior to MHC for nine tested OTUs). The final column indicates whether the result would still be significant after a Bonferroni correction

ISSN: 2049-2618