Lipidomes in health and disease: Analytical strategies and considerations

TLDR

Lipidomics, a rapidly growing field, focuses on global lipid characterization, with increasing emphasis on accurate quantitation, community efforts to establish best practices, and challenges in comprehensive analysis and limited knowledge of exposure impacts. The review aims to discuss recent progress in lipidomics analysis, focusing on analytical approaches and sources of variation in lipid quantification. The authors examine analytical approaches and technical and biological sources of variation in lipid quantification.

Abstract

Lipidomics is a rapidly-growing field which focuses on global characterization of lipids at molecular and systems levels. As small changes in the concentrations of lipids may have important physiological consequences, much attention in the field has recently been paid to more accurate quantitation and identification of lipids. Community-wide efforts have been initiated, aiming to develop best practices for lipidomic analyses and reporting of lipidomic data. Nevertheless, current approaches for comprehensive analysis of lipidomes have some inherent challenges and limitations. Additionally, there is, currently, limited knowledge concerning the impacts of various external and internal exposures on lipid levels. In this review, we discuss the recent progress in lipidomics analysis, with a primary focus on analytical approaches, as well as on the different sources of variation in quantifying lipid levels, both technical and biological.