A methodology for elucidating regulatory mechanisms leading to changes in lipid profiles.

Introduction: It is difficult to elucidate the metabolic and regulatory factors causing lipidome perturbations.

Objectives: This work simplifies this process.

Methods: A method has been developed to query an online holistic lipid metabolic network (of 7923 metabolites) to extract the pathways that connect the input list of lipids.

Results: The output enables pathway visualisation and the querying of other databases to identify potential regulators. When used to a study a plasma lipidome dataset of polycystic ovary syndrome, 14 enzymes were identified, of which 3 are linked to ELAVL1-an mRNA stabiliser.

Conclusion: This method provides a simplified approach to identifying potential regulators causing lipid-profile perturbations.