Cheminformatics approach to exploring and modeling trait-associated metabolite profiles

Journal of Cheminformatics

卷:11

Melaine A. Kuenemann¹  Jeremy R. Ash¹  Denis Fourches¹  Daniel Rotroff²  Alison Motsinger-Reif² 

[1] Department of Chemistry, North Carolina State University;

[2] Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University;

关键词: Metabolomics;    Data mining;    Cheminformatics;    Molecular fragmentation;    Statistics;    Visualization;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13321-019-0366-3

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Abstract Developing predictive and transparent approaches to the analysis of metabolite profiles across patient cohorts is of critical importance for understanding the events that trigger or modulate traits of interest (e.g., disease progression, drug metabolism, chemical risk assessment). However, metabolites’ chemical structures are still rarely used in the statistical modeling workflows that establish these trait-metabolite relationships. Herein, we present a novel cheminformatics-based approach capable of identifying predictive, interpretable, and reproducible trait-metabolite relationships. As a proof-of-concept, we utilize a previously published case study consisting of metabolite profiles from non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) adenocarcinoma patients and healthy controls. By characterizing each structurally annotated metabolite using both computed molecular descriptors and patient metabolite concentration profiles, we show that these complementary features enhance the identification and understanding of key metabolites associated with cancer. Ultimately, we built multi-metabolite classification models for assessing patients’ cancer status using specific groups of metabolites identified based on high structural similarity through chemical clustering. We subsequently performed a metabolic pathway enrichment analysis to identify potential mechanistic relationships between metabolites and NSCLC adenocarcinoma. This cheminformatics-inspired approach relies on the metabolites’ structural features and chemical properties to provide critical information about metabolite-trait associations. This method could ultimately facilitate biological understanding and advance research based on metabolomics data, especially with respect to the identification of novel biomarkers.

【 授权许可】

Unknown