Bayesian Independent Component Analysis Recovers Pathway Signatures from Blood Metabolomics Data

Interpreting the complex interplay of metabolites in heterogeneous biosamples still poses a challenging task. In this study, we propose independent component analysis (ICA) as a multivariate analysis tool for the interpretation of large-scale metabolomics data. In particular, we employ a Bayesian ICA method based on a mean-field approach, which allows us to statistically infer the number of independent components to be reconstructed. The advantage of ICA over correlation-based methods like principal component analysis (PCA) is the utilization of higher order statistical dependencies, which not only yield additional information but also allow a more meaningful representation of the data with fewer components. We performed the described ICA approach on a large-scale metabolomics data set of human serum samples, comprising a total of 1764 study probands with 218 measured metabolites. Inspecting the source matrix of statistically independent metabolite profiles using a weighted enrichment algorithm, we observ...