ABSTRACT
Lipids, de ned as fat soluble (lipophilic) molecules, are structurally the derivatives of fatty acid in a majority of cases, with glycerol as glycerides or phosphoglycerides and other molecules related biosynthetically or functionally to these compounds. Membrane lipids of mammalian cells are largely composed of glycerol neutral and phospholipids. They are the integral part of membrane structure, function, and composition. For a long time, research in this area was mainly limited to the classical methods of lipid analysis, such as the classi cation, quantitation, and composition of different lipid molecules, until the discoveries of lipids playing vital roles as biological messengers, cell membrane protectors, membrane bound protein anchors, regulators of actions of hormones and pheromones, and signal transducers in various cellular phenomenon were made.1-4 A number of genetic diseases have been identi ed to be due to abnormalities of lipid storage or aberrations of lipid functions.5-8 High risk of obesity, diabetes, and atherosclerosis are found to be attributed to the dietary intake of fat in increased amounts.9-12
Understanding lipid-mediated signaling processes that regulate cellular homeostasis and identify alterations in lipid metabolism under different states of physiologic conditions necessitates the development of more sophisticated techniques in lipid research. Thus, with the advancement of explosive research in genomics and proteomics, lipidomics (under the broad term metabolomics) has emerged as a developing and demanding eld in which multiple methodologies can be utilized to characterize and quantify the precise lipid metabolite or the metabolites of interest in a cell’s lipidome. Described here are the commonly used techniques for analyses of membrane lipids and lipidome.
