FAQs
Do you perform wet lab molecular assays (e.g., extraction, PCR, library preparation, sequencing, mass spec, etc.)?
We don’t perform experimental assays in-house, but can talk through what might be appropriate for your given study and can point you to some wet lab vendors that we regularly work with. Then we can perform microbial informatics and statistics, once data has been generated.
What is the cost for a microbiome project’s data analysis utilizing the Microbiome Analysis Core?
This varies depending on a variety of factors such as complexity of experimental design, data type(s), and sample size. Please contact us for an accurate estimate.
What type of deliverables should we expect if we decide to have the Microbiome Analysis Core perform the data analysis for our microbiome project?
This includes, but is not limited to, raw data processing (trimming, denoising, QC, host sequence removal, etc.), taxonomic and functional profiling, alpha and beta diversity, diversity and community composition exploratory plots (ordinations, heat maps, bar plots, box plots, scatter plots, etc.), omnibus and per-feature statistics (PERMANOVA, MaAsLin 2, etc.), association testing with inflammatory markers / metabolites / measurements, longitudinal associations, multi’omic associations, etc., and results interpretation and discussion.
What if we would like to do some or all of the microbiome data analysis for my project? Can the Microbiome Analysis Core still be of help to us?
Yes, we can assist with any or all steps of a microbiome research project. For example, if you want to perform the downstream analysis and statistics yourself and just want us to generate microbial community profile abundance tables, etc. from raw sequence data, we can do that. Another example: if you want to do both the microbial informatics and the downstream analysis and statistics yourself, but want our assistance throughout the process, we can work on a consulting basis for the project.