Lipidomics: Techniques, Applications, and Outcomes Related to Biomedical Sciences

Abstract

Lipidomics is a newly emerged discipline that studies cellular lipids on a large scale based on analytical chemistry principles and technological tools, particularly mass spectrometry. Recently, techniques have greatly advanced and novel applications of lipidomics in the biomedical sciences have emerged. This review provides a timely update on these aspects. After briefly introducing the lipidomics discipline, we compare mass spectrometry-based techniques for analysis of lipids and summarize very recent applications of lipidomics in health and disease. Finally, we discuss the status of the field, future directions, and advantages and limitations of the field.

Keywords: biomedical science; lipid metabolism; lipidome; lipidomics; mass spectrometry; shotgun lipidomics.

Figure 1

A typical workflow of lipidomic analysis of biological samples. Lipidomic analysis of biological samples includes sample preparation, mass spectrometry-based analysis (i.e., MS data acquisition), and data processing. MS: mass spectrometry; MS/MS: tandem mass spectrometry; LC: liquid chromatography; I.S.: internal standard; ESI: electrospray ionization; MALDI: Matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization; APCI: Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization; APPI: Atmospheric pressure photoionization; SIMS: Secondary ion mass spectrometry; TIC: total ion chromatogram; XIC: extracted ion chromatogram.