Reporting guidelines for human microbiome research: the STORMS checklist.

Authors:
Chloe Mirzayi, Audrey Renson, Fatima Zohra, Shaimaa Elsafoury, Ludwig Geistlinger, Lora J Kasselman, Kelly Eckenrode, Janneke van de Wijgert, Amy Loughman, Francine Z Marques, David A MacIntyre, Manimozhiyan Arumugam, Rimsha Azhar, Francesco Beghini, Kirk Bergstrom, Ami Bhatt, Jordan E Bisanz, Jonathan Braun, Hector Corrada Bravo, Gregory A Buck, Frederic Bushman, David Casero, Gerard Clarke, Maria Carmen Collado, Paul D Cotter, John F Cryan, Ryan T Demmer, Suzanne Devkota, Eran Elinav, Juan S Escobar, Jennifer Fettweis, Robert D Finn, Anthony A Fodor, Sofia Forslund, Andre Franke, Cesare Furlanello, Jack Gilbert, Elizabeth Grice, Benjamin Haibe-Kains, Scott Handley, Pamela Herd, Susan Holmes, Jonathan P Jacobs, Lisa Karstens, Rob Knight, Dan Knights, Omry Koren, Douglas S Kwon, Morgan Langille, Brianna Lindsay, Dermot McGovern, Alice C McHardy, Shannon McWeeney, Noel T Mueller, Luigi Nezi, Matthew Olm, Noah Palm, Edoardo Pasolli, Jeroen Raes, Matthew R Redinbo, Malte Rühlemann, R Balfour Sartor, Patrick D Schloss, Lynn Schriml, Eran Segal, Michelle Shardell, Thomas Sharpton, Ekaterina Smirnova, Harry Sokol, Justin L Sonnenburg, Sujatha Srinivasan, Louise B Thingholm, Peter J Turnbaugh, Vaibhav Upadhyay, Ramona L Walls, Paul Wilmes, Takuji Yamada, Georg Zeller, Mingyu Zhang, Ni Zhao, Liping Zhao, Wenjun Bao, Aedin Culhane, Viswanath Devanarayan, Joaquin Dopazo, Xiaohui Fan, Matthias Fischer, Wendell Jones, Rebecca Kusko, Christopher E Mason, Tim R Mercer, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Andreas Scherer, Leming Shi, Shraddha Thakkar, Weida Tong, Russ Wolfinger, Christopher Hunter, Nicola Segata, Curtis Huttenhower, Jennifer B Dowd, Heidi E Jones, Levi Waldron
Year of publication:
2021
Volume:
27
Issue:
11
Issn:
1078-8956
Journal title abbreviated:
NAT MED
Journal title long:
Nature medicine
Impact factor:
87.244
Abstract:
The particularly interdisciplinary nature of human microbiome research makes the organization and reporting of results spanning epidemiology, biology, bioinformatics, translational medicine and statistics a challenge. Commonly used reporting guidelines for observational or genetic epidemiology studies lack key features specific to microbiome studies. Therefore, a multidisciplinary group of microbiome epidemiology researchers adapted guidelines for observational and genetic studies to culture-independent human microbiome studies, and also developed new reporting elements for laboratory, bioinformatics and statistical analyses tailored to microbiome studies. The resulting tool, called 'Strengthening The Organization and Reporting of Microbiome Studies' (STORMS), is composed of a 17-item checklist organized into six sections that correspond to the typical sections of a scientific publication, presented as an editable table for inclusion in supplementary materials. The STORMS checklist provides guidance for concise and complete reporting of microbiome studies that will facilitate manuscript preparation, peer review, and reader comprehension of publications and comparative analysis of published results.