Discussion: Acceptable NSTI values in PICRUSt2

[Lasse Steffensen]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to open a discussion about NSTI values, since I think it's a bit unclear what a "good" NSTI value looks like in PICRUSt2. 

Using the latest version of PICRUSt2 (v.2.6.2) and the tutorial dataset, I obtained a mean NSTI value of 0.04. According to the NSTI "rating" of PICRUSt1, this would be considered good. I however obtained mean NSTI values of approx. 0.2 from data originating from anaerobic digester sludge, which would be considered high, according to the old rating (which is posted on the Tutorial page on GitHub for PICRUSt2). I even read a previous post where someone obtained ~15% ASVs with NSTI > 2, which seems very high. Other than this, I struggle to find a good reference for what NSTI values should look like using PICRUSt2.

I therefore wanted to open a discussion about what everyone's NSTI values look like, so that we can help each other out. Let us know!

Kind regards,
Lasse