Microbiome community inference in low microbial biomass environments

Microbiome community compositon is an important factor in human health, and while most microbiome research to date has focused on high microbial biomass communites, low biomass communites, such as found in the urinary tract, are also of medical importance. The relatve scarcity of microbes in low biomass communites makes an accurate determinaton of community compositon challenging, since contaminaton and technical noise may confound the true community signal when biomass is very low. However, the impact of these noise sources on microbial community inference is not well studied.