{
  "abstract": "Background: This exploratory study aimed to characterize amino acid related features in osteoarthritis (OA). Methods: We analyzed independent public synovial transcriptomic datasets and paired fecal metabolomics and 16S ribosomal RNA profiles from 20 patients with knee OA and 14 controls. Metabolite-sensing genes were intersected with nominally differential genes and prioritized using elastic net, support vector machine recursive feature elimination, and extreme gradient boosting. Results:SLC1A5 (solute carrier family 1 member 5) expression was lower in the discovery cohort GSE89408 (log2 fold change = −0.532, p = 0.0159), but did not meet the false discovery rate (FDR) threshold of 0.05 (FDR = 0.0697). GSE55235 showed a concordant decrease (log2 fold change = −0.695, p = 0.00536; area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.830). Single-cell computational predictions from three OA donors suggested endothelial, smooth muscle, and mast-cell contexts. Tissue-level SLC1A5 expression correlated with inferred M2 macrophage proportions after group adjustment (r = −0.575, FDR = 0.002). Six features with Level 3 putative glutamine-, asparagine-, or glutamate-containing tripeptide annotations differed between groups (q = 0.00245 to 0.00948), whereas the corresponding free amino acids did not reach FDR significance. Bacteroides showed a lower centered log-ratio value in OA (q = 0.00273); none of its six tripeptide correlations remained significant after group adjustment. Conclusions: These observations generate a hypothesis about intestinal amino acid-related features and synovial SLC1A5 expression; they do not establish a direct gut-joint relationship, peptide identity, or a metabolic mechanism.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Department of Joint Surgery and Sports Medicine, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, China"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Xingzong Zhu"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Hongrui Du"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Bin Li"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Hangyuan He"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Yang Tan"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6xt3f83rt3zts.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.3390/metabo16100764",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "6xt3f83rt3zts",
  "issns": [
    "2218-1989"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1989/16/10/764",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "2745|Osteoarthritis Treatment and Mechanisms"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221573151",
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-12",
  "publisher": "MDPI AG",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6xt3f83rt3zts.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:19:00Z",
      "native_id": "10.3390/metabo16100764",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1989/16/10/764"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biochemistry",
      "origin": "issn:2218-1989",
      "subfield": "proteomics-metabolomics"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Synovial SLC1A5-Associated Amino Acid Metabolic Features in Knee Osteoarthritis: An Integrated Analysis of Synovial Transcriptomics, Fecal Metabolomics, and Gut Microbiota",
  "title_text": "Synovial SLC1A5-Associated Amino Acid Metabolic Features in Knee Osteoarthritis: An Integrated Analysis of Synovial Transcriptomics, Fecal Metabolomics, and Gut Microbiota",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:19:00Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6xt3f83rt3zts",
  "venue": "Metabolites",
  "versions": []
}