Comparative analysis of microbiome measurement platforms using latent variable structural equation modeling

Background Culture-independent phylogenetic analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences has emerged as an incisive method of profiling bacteria present in a specimen. Currently, multiple techniques are available to enumerate the abundance of bacterial taxa in specimens, including the Sanger sequencing, the ‘next generation’ pyrosequencing, microarrays, quantitative PCR, and the rapidly emerging, third generation sequencing, and fourth generation sequencing methods. An efficient statistical tool is in urgent need for the followings tasks: (1) to compare the agreement between these measurement platforms, (2) to select the most reliable platform(s), and (3) to combine different platforms of complementary strengths, for a unified analysis.