The fobitools framework: the first steps towards food enrichment analysis

Area of Science:

• Nutrimetabolomics
• Bioinformatics
• Computational Biology

Background:

• The Food-Based Ontology (FOBI) offers significant potential for nutrimetabolomic studies, particularly for enrichment analyses.
• However, the technical expertise required to access and utilize FOBI has limited its widespread adoption within the scientific community.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a user-friendly framework, fobitools, to enhance accessibility and utility of the FOBI ontology for researchers.
• To introduce novel food enrichment analysis methods within the nutrimetabolomics domain.

Main Methods:

• Development of an R/Bioconductor package and a complementary web interface (fobitoolsGUI).
• Implementation of interactive network visualization for FOBI.
• Integration of automatic annotation for dietary free-text data.

Main Results:

• The fobitools framework provides intuitive tools for exploring FOBI, including specialized food enrichment analysis.
• Interactive visualization and automated dietary data annotation features are included.
• Both the R package and web application are freely available with comprehensive documentation.

Conclusions:

• The fobitools framework significantly lowers the barrier to entry for utilizing the FOBI ontology in nutrimetabolomic research.
• This framework empowers researchers to conduct advanced analyses, such as food enrichment and dietary data annotation, more efficiently.