Melody: meta-analysis of microbiome association studies for discovering generalizable microbial signatures

作者：Zhoujingpeng Wei, Guanhua Chen, Zheng-Zheng Tang · 发表于：Genome biology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s13059-025-03721-4 · 被引用次数：6 · 研究领域：Gut microbiota and health、Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry Studies、Nutritional Studies and Diet

Standard protocols for meta-analysis of association studies are inadequate for microbiome data due to their complex compositional structure, leading to inaccurate and unstable microbial signature selection. To address this issue, we introduce Melody, a framework that generates, harmonizes, and combines study-specific summary association statistics to powerfully and robustly identify microbial signatures in meta-analysis. Comprehensive and realistic simulations demonstrate that Melody substantially outperforms existing approaches in prioritizing true signatures. In the meta-analyses of five studies on colorectal cancer and eight studies on the gut metabolome, we showcase the superior stability, reliability, and predictive performance of Melody-identified signatures.