Sample Size

One of the most common questions we get from investigators at the Microbial Metagenomics Analysis Center (MMAC) is how many samples should I collect for my study? Even once we have a clearly stated and testable hypothesis, this is not always easy, since sample size calculations for microbiome studies are typically not amenable to closed form solutions (i.

I was recently asked how many samples we might need to formally power a differential abundance analysis of prevalent species in the human stool microbiome between “otherwise healthy” control samples and patients with a specific disease condition.