| THIS. One hundred times this. For these results to be in any way meaningful you need to conduct the experiment three times (and, three times with one person isn't actually enough to actually pull statistically meanigful results from, but one step at a time). 1) At t=0
2) At t=x [no transplant]
3) At t=x2 [after transplant] The thing you actually need to compare is the variation between the difference of 1 and 2 and 1 and 3. The variation between 1 and 2 measures the general variation in your gut biome. So now you have a baseline of what to expect under "normal" variation. So, how does this compare to what you see after the transplant? Beyond this, how do you control for literally everything in your life around both samples? Maybe you were sick? Maybe you'd been to the gym? Maybe you ate a banana? How do these things affect the microbiome? Without this kind of information its very difficult to draw any kinds of conclusions regarding the impact of a transplant. As an analogy - lets say I don't know anything about night and day. I look at my window at some time (say in the morning). It's light. I then write the sentence "LET THERE MY NIGHT" on my wall in marker pen at around 8pm and look at my window. Behold - it's night! So, from this I might conclude writing on my wall brought about the night. ALL that being said, being curious and engaged in this type of thing is only good. The important thing to bear in mind is that without some thought to experimental design the conclusions drawn cannot really be described as conclusions. This is a great first post, but the determination of natural variation in the gut mirobiome is needed before the impact of the transplant can even be considered. |