Bioinformatics
The differential metabolites were imported into the IPA software, revealing several relevant biological pathways, such as MAPK, NF-κB, Dectin-1/Syk, and IL-17 signaling pathways (Fig. 7). Moreover, molecular docking experiments indicated that the binding energy of the small molecule metabolite linoleic acid to ACSL1 was -7.2kcal/mol, suggesting that ACSL1 may be the target protein of linoleic acid (Fig. 8A). Linoleic acid formed hydrogen bonds with MET-325 and PHE-326 of ACSL1, with hydrogen bond lengths of 2.8Å and 2.1Å, respectively (Fig. 8B-C).