Figure 4.

Lipoproteins have altered interaction networks depending on hormone presence

Network analysis displaying correlative relationships between lipid metabolites in (A) young post-pubertal cis-men (n = 15), (B) young post-pubertal cis-women (n = 17), (C) young trans-men (n = 26) undergoing cross-sex-hormone treatment with testosterone, or (D) young trans-women (n = 25) undergoing cross-sex-hormone treatment with estradiol. The high-dimensional undirected graphs were produced using the R package “high dimensional undirected graph estimation” (HUGE). Each of the colored nodes represents a single lipid metabolite variable: a key showing metabolite names corresponding to numbers on the nodes is in Table S6. Edges between nodes show likely correlations between two lipid metabolites, where a dense cluster of nodes implies a stronger relationship between the metabolites than the sparser clustered nodes. Nodes (or small groups of nodes) with no linking edge implies that they are conditionally independent compared with the other metabolites. Enlarged nodes represent lipid metabolites that overlap between all hormone comparisons identified from Figure 3A. Relevant fatty acid metabolites and ApoA1 are labeled with arrows.

Abbreviations: VL/I/L/HDL, very low/intermediate/low/high density lipoproteins; Unsat, unsaturated; SFA, saturated fatty acids; MUFA, monounsaturated fatty acids; ApoA1, Apolipoprotein-A1; DHA, docosahexaenoic acid.