To Örebro University

Metagenomic analysis is a very rich area for understanding the microbiology of organisms. Once the data has been assembled mathematical and statistical methods can be applied providing insights into biological properties that created the data in the first place. The foundations however, require some knowledge of microbiology which is not usually part of a mathematician’s nor a statistician’s training, and therefore, the data creation can itself be quite mysterious. In this paper we attempt to explain the microbiology to mathematicians and statisticians in a way that would hopefully provide insights into the data generating process. In particular our approach is specific to the open-source bioinformatics toolbox mothur. We will assume the reader has very little microbiology training but has some mathematical skills. It is the endeavor of this write-up to help bridge a needed gap.