{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,22]],"date-time":"2026-03-22T09:53:54Z","timestamp":1774173234078,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":31,"publisher":"Oxford University Press (OUP)","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,12,20]],"date-time":"2023-12-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1703030400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004052","name":"King Abdullah University of Science and Technology","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["458901010"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["458901010"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004052","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,2]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title><jats:sec><jats:title>Summary<\/jats:title><jats:p>We present Coracle, an artificial intelligence (AI) framework that can identify associations between bacterial communities and continuous variables. Coracle uses an ensemble approach of prominent feature selection methods and machine learning (ML) models to identify features, i.e. bacteria, associated with a continuous variable, e.g. host thermal tolerance. The results are aggregated into a score that incorporates the performances of the different ML models and the respective feature importance, while also considering the robustness of feature selection. Additionally, regression coefficients provide first insights into the direction of the association. We show the utility of Coracle by analyzing associations between bacterial composition data (i.e. 16S rRNA Amplicon Sequence Variants, ASVs) and coral thermal tolerance (i.e. standardized short-term heat stress-derived diagnostics). This analysis identified high-scoring bacterial taxa that were previously found associated with coral thermal tolerance. Coracle scales with feature number and performs well with hundreds to thousands of features, corresponding to the typical size of current datasets. Coracle performs best if run at a higher taxonomic level first (e.g. order or family) to identify groups of interest that can subsequently be run at the ASV level.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Availability and implementation<\/jats:title><jats:p>Coracle can be accessed via a dedicated web server that allows free and simple access: http:\/\/www.micportal.org\/coracle\/index. The underlying code is open-source and available via GitHub https:\/\/github.com\/SebastianStaab\/coracle.git.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1093\/bioinformatics\/btad749","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,12,19]],"date-time":"2023-12-19T17:27:46Z","timestamp":1703006866000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":12,"title":["Coracle\u2014a machine learning framework to identify bacteria associated with continuous variables"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"40","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-1465-8670","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Sebastian","family":"Staab","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biology, University of Konstanz , Konstanz 78457, Germany"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4080-9010","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anny","family":"Card\u00e9nas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Biology, University of Konstanz , Konstanz 78457, Germany"},{"name":"Department of Biology, American University , Washington, DC, 20016, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9536-3132","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Raquel S","family":"Peixoto","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computational Biology Research Center (CBRC) and Red Sea Research Center (RSRC), Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering Division (BESE), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) , Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9307-3254","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Falk","family":"Schreiber","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz , Konstanz 78457, Germany"},{"name":"Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University , 3168, Australia"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4555-3795","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Christian 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