Population Specific Classification of Colorectal Cancer with Meta-Analysis of Metagenomic Data

Advances in next-generation sequencing and “-omics” technologies makes it possible to characterize the human gut microbiome. While some of these microorganisms are important regulators of our immune system, modulation of the microbiota leads to a variety of diseases. Colorectal cancer (CRC), the third most common cancer worldwide, is caused by genetic mutations, environmental conditions, and abnormalities in the gut microbiota. Using various machine learning methods and meta-analysis techniques, this study aims to build a classification model that can help in CRC diagnosis by analyzing metagenomic datasets of different populations obtained at the species level. Using 8 different countries and 9 different metagenomic datasets, 3 different meta-analyzes are performed: within-population, cross-population, and one population is selected for testing and the rest is used as a training dataset (LODO). For CRC classification, 4 different classification algorithms (Random Forest (RF), Logitboost, Adaboost, and Decision Tree (DT)) are used. The best performance among these methods was obtained with the Random Forest algorithm with an AUC of 0.98 by using JP for the training data set and JPN populations for the test data set in the cross-population performance evaluation.