outliers and different values between triplicates in pred_metagenome_unstrat file

[LUCIA CABELLO ALEMAN]

Hi group!

I have obtained as output of picrust2 very large (abnormal) and different values between triplicates of environmental samples after metabarcoding with 16S (in the pred_metagenome_unstrat file).

 For example: in one sample we obtained for two replicates values of 835 and 319, and for the same sample and same gene another value of 6023199999999990.

This is repeated for almost all genes in the different samples.

I don't know if it could be a formatting error and the dots or commas are intervening erroneously? or where could this error come from?

Thank you very much!

[Robyn Wright]

Hi there,

What are you using to open these files? That definitely does sound a bit weird! Can you use something like grep with some of those functions in the command line to check what the values are in the raw files without opening them in some text editor (or other)? The other questions is whether you see very different abundance values for any taxa in those samples within the feature table that you use as PICRUSt2 input? 

Best wishes,

Robyn