A new workflow combining R packages for statistical analysis of metabolites

Abstract

In metabolomics, the investigation of an association between many metabolites and one trait (such as age in humans or cultivar in foods) is a central research question. On this topic, we present a complete statistical analysis, combining selected R packages in a new workflow, which we are sharing completely, according to modern standards and research reproducibility requirements. We demonstrate the workflow using a large-scale study with public data, available on repositories. Hence, the workflow can directly be re-used on quite different metabolomics data, when searching for association with one covariate of interest.