Features that appear in only one sample considered as artifacts when uploading data

[slambrechts]

Hi,

I was wondering why features that appear in only one sample are automatically excluded when uploading data to MicrobiomeAnalyst? It would be very usefull if this was a data filtering step that could be turned off. I would think whether or not these can be considered as artifacts depends on how diverse the environment is (e.g. human gut vs soil) and the amount of samples that are included?

In the Nature protocols paper you write:

"Note that the filtered data will not be used for alpha-diversity analysis"

But since the filtering of features that appear in only one sample is done when uploading data, and thus before the data filtering step, I assume alpha-diversity is calculated without including features that appear in only one sample?

Cheers,
Sam