Lipidomic

Lipidomics is the large-scale study of pathways and networks of cellular lipids in biological systems. It aims to characterize the structure, function, and dynamics of cellular lipids and their roles in health and disease. Lipidomic analyses typically rely on mass spectrometry (MS) combined with chromatographic separation such as liquid chromatography (LC-MS) or tandem MS, as well as high-resolution MS and shotgun lipidomics. Sample preparation may involve extraction methods like Folch or Bligh-Dyer. The lipidome includes categories such as glycerolipids, glycerophospholipids, sphingolipids, sterols, and fatty acyls.

The data processing involves peak identification, lipid species annotation, quantification relative to internal standards, and data normalization. Public databases such as LIPID MAPS, LipidBank, and HMDB support lipid identification and pathway mapping.

Applications include biomarker discovery, understanding metabolic pathways, and investigating disease mechanisms in cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer. Lipidomics can be integrated with genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics in systems biology studies. Challenges include the chemical diversity and isomeric complexity of lipids, lack of universal standards for quantification, instrument variability, and the need for rigorous annotation and reporting guidelines.

As a field, lipidomics has evolved from targeted approaches to comprehensive profiling, enabling both broad surveys of lipid species and targeted quantification of known metabolites. Ongoing developments focus on improving sensitivity, coverage, quantitative accuracy, and data interoperability.