How to use metabolism indicators (MetaboINDICATORS) in statistical procedures?

How to use metabolism indicators (MetaboINDICATORS) in statistical procedures?

General use of metabolism indicators

Metabolism indicators shall help to get started with the kit data interpretations. Each calculated metabolism indicator serves as an added value to the results data set.

  1. Detailed information to each metabolism indicator is provided in the kit specific document biocrates-KIT Name list of metabolite sums and ratios (v#-YYYY), column “literature”, available on the Kit files, folder “Documents and Notes\MetaboINDICATOR”.


How to use metabolism indicators in statistical procedures

  1. As a simple rule, metabolism indicators should be incorporated in univariate analyses like statistical comparisons and correlation analysis just like additional metabolite features.

  1. In multivariate analyses like PCA and PLS-DA, however, metabolism indicators should not be included, because the information they contain on the metabolome is already present in the form of the metabolites they are calculated from, so adding them would add more weight to the metabolites these metabolites and skew the analysis.