Description:

Integrative Analysis for Incorporating the Microbiome to Improve Precision Medicine

The gut microbiome impacts health and risk of disease by dynamically integrating signals from the host and its environment. High throughput sequencing technologies enable individualized characterization of the microbiome composition and function. The resulting data can potentially be used for personalized diagnostic assessment, risk stratification, disease prevention and treatment. In this talk, I will present several ongoing microbiome studies at the University of Pennsylvania and provide some empirical evidence of using microbiome in precision medicine. I will talk about some statistical issues related to species abundance quantification, compositional data regression and mediation analysis.