Unlocking the complexity of lipids: using lipidomics to identify disease mechanisms, biomarkers and treatment efficacy

Biological lipids comprise thousands of discrete chemical entities that are categorized by the nature of their polar headgroups and chemical backbones (typically glycerol), and distinguished by the regiospecificity and identity of their aliphatic chains. Recent advances in mass spectrometry have led to the development of new methods to identify and quantify thousands of individual molecular species of lipids. The growth of this field, now termed lipidomics, is accelerating rapidly, driven by the need to determine the mechanisms of lipid-mediated disease, identify the functions of genes impacting on lipid metabolism and determine biomarkers predictive of adverse events and evaluate treatment efficacy, among others. By advancing current technologies, the spatiotemporal interactions in supramolecular assemblies mediating lipid signaling can be determined. Through exploiting the information content inherent in the complexity of cellular lipid composition and kinetic turnover, substantial insight into disease mechanisms and gene function can be gathered.