atlas of lipids in living organisms
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A research team led by scientists from the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS), the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Keio University, and the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS), have developed a standardized atlas of lipids in living organisms in an effort to accelerate research into lipids. Lipids have major functions like storage, regulation of cellular signals, production of energy, and formation of cell membranes.

“LipoQuality,” the precise determination of different molecular species of lipid is important as lipids are extremely diverse molecules. And it can help to understand their physiology, the diseases that arise from lipid dysfunction and to develop drugs from novel bioactive lipids.

Diseases like obesity, stroke, atherosclerosis, diabetes, and hypertension are associated with dysregulated lipid metabolism. Hence, understanding how lipids behave within complex biological systems is a field of great interest.

Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is a powerful method for analyzing lipid metabolites. Information on lipid mass spectral fragmentations was acquired by researchers using the latest LC-MS/MS and informatics techniques to create a very accurate—with an estimated false discovery rate of just 1 to 2%—atlas of lipids in living organisms.

From a variety of sources like mouse tissues, human blood, plants, algae

, and mammalian cells, they analyzed 1,056 biological samples. They developed an untargeted lipidomics platform, packaged in MS-DIAL 4 (Mass Spectrometry-Data Independent AnaLysis software version 4; prime.psc.riken.jp/) to comprehensively extract information on 8,051 different lipids in 117 categories from the mass spectrometry big data.

Moreover, they published a “lipidome atlas” that comprises a comprehensive database of lipid structures with their mass spectrum properties such as collision cross-section, retention time, and mass fragmentation pattern to correctly characterize lipids, and their product. Integrating genomics and proteomics, novel lipid pathways can be uncovered using the structures of previously unknown lipids they revealed.

This atlas of lipids in living organisms was developed to understand the molecular mechanisms behind the elicitation of biological functions in specific lipid structures, and how cellular and tissue homeostasis is maintained by the coordinated dynamics of these lipids, said Makoto Arita, who led the research group.

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