The inverse association between relative abundances of oleic acid and arachidonic acid: a case of distribution dependent regulation?

Using random numbers, generated within the biological distributions for OA, AA, and sum of the remaining fatty acids, we found an inverse relationship between "% OA" and "% AA", but the scatterplot was poor compared with that obtained with real values. The association between relative abundances of random numbers of OA and AA was very sensitive to changes in distributions, and a negative association could be changed to become positive by slightly altering the distributions. Thus, the association between relative abundances of OA and AA could be partly caused by the particular distribution of the fatty acid concentration: a Distribution Dependent Correlation.