For the taxonomic abundance profiles of the AGP, CRC-WGS and CRC-16S datasets, applying a data transformation alone did not significantly change the AUC results with the exception of logCPM in the CRC-WGS dataset where accuracy decreased significantly (median AUC went from 0.80 to 0.66, one-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum p-value = 0.0055) (Figs 4B–4D and S8). This evidence concerns the gene ATP5MK and colorectal carcinoma.