Interpreting gneiss output, a heatmap

[Anu1 (Anu)]

Completely new to qiime and bioinformatics in general, so help would be greatly appreciated.

I made a heatmap using gneiss.
This is the code I used:
qiime gneiss correlation-clustering --i-table table.qza --o-clustering hierarchy.qza

qiime gneiss dendrogram-heatmap --i-table table.qza --i-tree hierarchy.qza --m-metadata-file metadata4.txt --m-metadata-column combined --p-color-map seismic --o-visualization heatmap.qzv

How do I interpret this heatmap? I don't quite understand the concept of balances, so an explanation in layman's terms would be great. Basically, how would you explain this to a biologist?

[ChrisKeefe]

Welcome to the forum, @Anu1!
I haven't used gneiss, but here are some resources that might get you moving in the right direction:

• the tutorial
• the paper
• select posts linked by the author
• search

A couple of notes

• this visualization is deprecated, and will be removed in a future version of QIIME 2.
• while your question is clear and reasonable, it is also very general. As you read up, try to frame more specific statements of what you do and do not understand. That'll help ensure you get the answers you need.

Good luck, and happy -ing!
Chris