Integrative multi-omics profiling and pathway analysis for human biofluids

Identifier:  TFG:8123

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFG8123

Authors:  Margalef Burgos, Annabel

Abstract:
Blood and cerebrospinal fluid are two biofluids with very important functions in the human body. To study these two biofluids, multi-omics analysis and pathway analysis are necessary. Therefore, a source of information that includes all the omics data of these biofluids is needed in order to conduct comparative studies and and metabolic pathway analysis. With the current information sources available on the internet, this is not possible, as many of them do not contain specific information about the fluids, are incomplete, outdated, and have redundant information. Therefore, the LifeFluids project emerged with the objective of creating multi-omics databases of the composition of the body's biofluids. In this final degree project, two unified databases were created for blood and cerebrospinal fluid, compiling information on their composition of metabolites, proteins, transcripts, and chemical elements. Afterwards, multi-omics profiling and pathway analysis were performed with the obtained data to evaluate the metabolic pathways involving both biofluids. The methodology involved identifying necessary and available sources for collecting information on the mentioned omics, creating the databases, studying correlations between the two biofluids to identify common elements, and analyzing metabolic pathways. For the creation of the databases, existing information sources were consulted and integrated, such as recognized online databases like the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB), Vesiclepedia (VSCP), and Marker DB (MDB), among others. Additionally, literature and repositories were consulted. These sources use different nomenclatures, so standardized identifiers were needed to normalize the data included in our database: InChIKey for metabolites and chemical elements, Uniprot ID for proteins, and HGNC ID for transcripts. As a result, the Life Fluids database for blood contains 90.482 metabolites, 15.763 proteins, 1.463 transcripts, and 98 chemical elements. The Life Fluids database for cerebrospinal fluid contains 2.090 metabolites, 5.447 proteins, 1.431 transcripts, and 47 chemical elements. Afterwards, all this data was used to investigate associated diseases by studying the metabolic pathways involved in each biofluid and the consequences that their perturbations could have. The newly created databases provide a valuable resource for researchers studying these biofluids, enabling a more comprehensive analysis of the previously existing data.