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Updated: May 11, 2026
A Lipid Extraction and Analysis Method for Characterizing Soil Microbes in Experiments with Many Samples
Published on: July 16, 2017
Plasma lipidomics and fungal peptide-based community analysis identifies distinct signatures for early mortality in
Neha Sharma1, Sushmita Pandey1, Gaurav Tripathi1
1Departments of Molecular and Cellular Medicine, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Background/Aims:
Acute liver failure (ALF) has high mortality predominantly due to compromised immune system and increased vulnerability to bacterial and fungal infections.
Methods:
Plasma lipidome and fungal peptide-based community (mycobiome) analysis were performed in discovery cohort (ALF=40, healthy=5) and validated in a validation cohort of 230 patients with ALF using high-resolution-mass-spectrometry, artificial neural network (ANN) and machine learning (ML).
Results:
Untargeted lipidomics identified 2,013 lipids across 8 lipid group. 5 lipid-species-phosphatidylcholine (PC)[15:0/17:0], PC[20:1/14:1], PC[26:4/10:0], PC[32:0] and TG[4:0/10:0/23:6]-significantly differentiated ALF-NS (FC>10, P<0.05, FDR<0.01). Mycobiome alpha/beta diversity was significantly higher and showed 4 phyla and >20 species significantly dysregulated in ALF-NS linked with lipid metabolism, fatty acid elongation in ER, and others (P<0.05). Lipid and mycobiome diversity values in ALF-NS were strongly correlated (r2>0.7, P<0.05). Multi-modular correlation network showed striking associations between lipid, fungal peptide modules, and clinical parameters specific to ALF-NS (P<0.05). Cryptococcus amylolentus CBS6039 and Penicillium oxalicum 1142 directly correlated with phosphatidylcholine, triglycerides, and severity in ALF-NS (r2>0.85, P<0.05). POD-fungus and POD-lipids showed direct association with infection, necrosis, and hepatic encephalopathy (Beta>1.2, P<0.05). POD-lipid (AUC=0.969 and HR=1.99 [1.02-2.04]) superseded POD-fungus and severity indices for early-mortality prediction. Finally, significant increase in PC (15:0/17:0) level showed highest normalized importance, and ANNs and ML predicted early mortality with >95% accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. Interestingly, fungal surveillance protein Clec7a was significantly downregulated (>2-fold), leading to a notable increase in fungal infection-mediated choline/phosphatidylcholine and associated enzymes (FC>1.5; Kennedy cycle). This contributed to phosphatidic acid-mediated hyper-inflammation in ALF-NS.
Conclusion:
In ALF, the plasma lipidome and mycobiome are dysregulated. Increased circulating phosphatidylcholine could stratify ALF predisposed to early mortality or require emergency liver transplantation.
