Fig. 2.

Network structure of the airway microbiome in normal subjects, compared to smokers and asthmatics The Chord plots show sharing and discordance of 4207 OTUs common to the three datasets for co-abundance networks. (a) Network membership in the whole population (top half of plot) compared to current smokers (bottom half of plot); and (b) compared to asthmatics. Module colours are arbitrarily assigned by WGCNA, and module bacterial names are derived from Table 2. Modules in smokers and asthmatics are simply named by size (Smoker.1, Asthma.2, etc.). There is a marked change of structure with fragmentation of major networks in the smokers, but high conservation of network membership between asthmatics and the whole cohort.