A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate

Fatty acids are important sources of energy and possible predictors and etiologic factors in many common complex pathologies such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain forms of cancers. While fatty acids are thought to covary with each other, their underlying causal networks have not been...

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Main Authors:	Yazdani, Azam, Yazdani, Akram, Boerwinkle, Eric
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982951/

id	pubmed-4982951
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-49829512016-08-23 A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate Yazdani, Azam Yazdani, Akram Boerwinkle, Eric Research Articles Fatty acids are important sources of energy and possible predictors and etiologic factors in many common complex pathologies such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain forms of cancers. While fatty acids are thought to covary with each other, their underlying causal networks have not been fully elucidated. This study reports the identification and analysis of a statistical causal network among 15 mostly long-chain fatty acids. In an African-American population sample and using the Genome granularity-Directed Acyclic Graph (GDAG) algorithm, we determined directions or causal relationships in the fatty acid metabolome. A directed causal network was constructed that revealed 29 significant edges among the 15 nodes (p < 0.001). We report that two fatty acid metabolites, palmitoleate and margarate, which originate from dietary intake, together influence every other fatty acid in the network. On the other hand, despite its high connectivity, dihomo-linoleate did not appear to play an important role over the whole fatty acid network. These findings collectively suggest possible strategic entry points for new treatments or preventive modalities against diseases affected by fatty acid metabolites such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity. Further studies examining the embedded substructure of the fatty acid metabolite networks in independent population samples would be timely and warranted as we move toward novel postgenomic diagnostics and therapeutics. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 2016-08-01 2016-08-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4982951/ /pubmed/27501297 http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/omi.2016.0071 Text en © Azam Yazdani, et al., 2016. Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Yazdani, Azam Yazdani, Akram Boerwinkle, Eric
spellingShingle	Yazdani, Azam Yazdani, Akram Boerwinkle, Eric A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate
author_facet	Yazdani, Azam Yazdani, Akram Boerwinkle, Eric
author_sort	Yazdani, Azam
title	A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate
title_short	A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate
title_full	A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate
title_fullStr	A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate
title_full_unstemmed	A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate
title_sort	causal network analysis of the fatty acid metabolome in african-americans reveals a critical role for palmitoleate and margarate
description	Fatty acids are important sources of energy and possible predictors and etiologic factors in many common complex pathologies such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain forms of cancers. While fatty acids are thought to covary with each other, their underlying causal networks have not been fully elucidated. This study reports the identification and analysis of a statistical causal network among 15 mostly long-chain fatty acids. In an African-American population sample and using the Genome granularity-Directed Acyclic Graph (GDAG) algorithm, we determined directions or causal relationships in the fatty acid metabolome. A directed causal network was constructed that revealed 29 significant edges among the 15 nodes (p < 0.001). We report that two fatty acid metabolites, palmitoleate and margarate, which originate from dietary intake, together influence every other fatty acid in the network. On the other hand, despite its high connectivity, dihomo-linoleate did not appear to play an important role over the whole fatty acid network. These findings collectively suggest possible strategic entry points for new treatments or preventive modalities against diseases affected by fatty acid metabolites such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity. Further studies examining the embedded substructure of the fatty acid metabolite networks in independent population samples would be timely and warranted as we move toward novel postgenomic diagnostics and therapeutics.
publisher	Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982951/
_version_	1613626794925096960

A Causal Network Analysis of the Fatty Acid Metabolome in African-Americans Reveals a Critical Role for Palmitoleate and Margarate

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