name: ancombc description: > ANCOM-BC / ANCOM-BC2 — compositionally aware differential abundance with sampling-fraction bias correction (Bioconductor ANCOMBC). Use when DA must account for compositionality and unequal sampling fractions; complements MaAsLin2/LEfSe. license: MIT metadata: version: "1.0.1" metagenomics.category: "evaluation" metagenomics.tags: "ANCOM-BC, ANCOM-BC2, differential-abundance, compositionality, Bioconductor" metagenomics.upstream: "https://github.com/FrederickHuangLin/ANCOMBC" metagenomics.stage: "report" metagenomics.maturity: "reviewed" metagenomics.last-reviewed: "2026-10-18" metagenomics.command-status: "ANCOM-BC2 R API reviewed against upstream; not executed here"

ANCOM-BC / ANCOM-BC2

Upstream: FrederickHuangLin/ANCOMBC · Bioconductor: https://bioconductor.org/packages/ANCOMBC/

Citation

Lin, H. & Peddada, S. D. Analysis of compositions of microbiomes with bias correction. Nat. Commun. 11, 3514 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17041-7

ANCOM-BC2: Lin, H. & Peddada, S. D. Multigroup analysis of compositions of microbiomes with covariate adjustments and repeated measures. Nat. Methods 21, 83–89 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-023-02092-7

See also docs/references.md.

Analytical thinking

ANCOM-BC estimates sampling fractions, corrects compositional bias, and reports taxon-wise effects with CIs and FDR. Prefer when compositionality is a primary concern. Pin ancombc vs ancombc2, formula, and prevalence filters. Often takes phyloseq / TreeSummarizedExperiment-style inputs.

How to run

library(ANCOMBC)
counts <- as.matrix(read.delim("counts.tsv", row.names = 1, check.names = FALSE))
meta <- read.delim("metadata.tsv", row.names = 1, check.names = FALSE)
stopifnot(all(is.finite(counts)), all(counts >= 0), all(counts == floor(counts)))
stopifnot(!anyDuplicated(colnames(counts)), !anyDuplicated(rownames(meta)))
stopifnot(setequal(colnames(counts), rownames(meta)), all(c("group", "age") %in% names(meta)))
meta <- meta[colnames(counts), , drop = FALSE]
meta$group <- relevel(factor(meta$group), ref = "Control")
set.seed(2024)
fit <- ancombc2(
  data = counts, meta_data = meta, fix_formula = "group + age",
  rand_formula = NULL, p_adj_method = "holm", pseudo_sens = TRUE,
  prv_cut = 0.10, lib_cut = 0, s0_perc = 0.05, group = "group",
  struc_zero = TRUE, neg_lb = TRUE, alpha = 0.05, n_cl = 4,
  verbose = TRUE, global = TRUE, pairwise = TRUE,
  dunnet = FALSE, trend = FALSE)
dir.create("result/ancombc2", recursive = TRUE, showWarnings = FALSE)
write.csv(fit$res, "result/ancombc2/coefficients.csv", row.names = FALSE)
write.csv(fit$res_pair, "result/ancombc2/pairwise.csv", row.names = FALSE)
writeLines(capture.output(sessionInfo()), "result/ancombc2/sessionInfo.txt")

This matrix route requires raw integer feature counts with taxa as rows and samples as columns. For repeated measures or phyloseq/TreeSummarizedExperiment input, use the pinned ANCOM-BC2 vignette and declare the random-effects formula.

Decision tree

Differential abundance?
├─ Bias-corrected compositional DA → ancombc
├─ Multivariable / longitudinal meta-omics → maaslin2
├─ Classic LDA → lefse
└─ GUI exploratory → stamp

Validation, recovery, and provenance

Validate sample alignment, integer counts, library sizes, prevalence, group replication, factor references, design rank and confounding before fitting. Inspect convergence/warnings, sensitivity scores, structural-zero calls, effect direction, confidence/standard errors, adjusted p-values, global/pairwise multiplicity families, and taxa removed by filters. Repeat key conclusions under justified prevalence/library thresholds and with/without problematic samples.

Save original counts/metadata, exclusions, exact function call and seed, result objects/tables, Bioconductor lockfile, and sessionInfo(). Report estimates and uncertainty with the correction family; do not compare ANCOM-BC log-fold changes directly with ordinary relative-abundance fold changes. Results are model-dependent associations, not causal or absolute-load evidence.

Related skills

research-analysis · maaslin2 · lefse · phyloseq · microeco · stamp · tool-selection