Snowflake

Snowflake visualizes microbiome abundance tables as multivariate bipartite graphs to represent every observed Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) and Amplicon Sequence Variant (ASV) and their relationships to samples.

Key Features:

• Graph representation: Represents microbiome abundance tables as multivariate bipartite graphs linking taxa (OTUs/ASVs) to samples.
• Comprehensive display of OTU/ASV: Displays every observed OTU or ASV from abundance tables, preserving less abundant reads without taxonomic aggregation.
• Hierarchical structure and integration of analyses: Incorporates data hierarchical structure and integrates downstream analyses, including alpha- and beta-diversity metrics and relevant metadata.
• Topological exploration: Enables identification of taxa unique to specific samples versus taxa shared among multiple samples to distinguish sample-specific taxa from the core microbiome.

Scientific Applications:

• Comparative composition analysis: Analyze and compare microbiome compositions across different samples using a full-resolution representation of taxa.
• Taxa specificity and core microbiome identification: Identify unique and shared taxa within and between sample groups and delineate core microbiome components.
• Integration of diversity metrics and metadata: Integrate alpha- and beta-diversity metrics and sample metadata with taxon-level abundance to enhance interpretation of community structure.

Methodology:

Snowflake represents microbiome abundance tables as multivariate bipartite graphs, and its development and evaluation were guided by the ICE-T (Innovation, Clarity, Efficiency, Trustworthiness) methodology.