Variable selection in microbiome compositional data analysis

Though variable selection is one of the most relevant tasks in microbiome analysis, e.g. for the identification of microbial signatures, many studies still rely on methods that ignore the compositional nature of microbiome data. The applicability of compositional data analysis methods has been hampered by the availability of software and the difficulty in interpreting their results. This work is focused on three methods for variable selection that acknowledge the compositional structure of microbiome data: