ABSTRACT
Fundamentally, lipidomics can be defined as the qualitative and quantitative determination of all lipid molecular species in a biological fluid, tissue, or cell type. This goal is impractical for individual groups of workers, but is a realistic aim, at least for the more abundant lipids, for consortia of lipid scientists. Such consortia exist and the Lipid Maps (https:// www.lipidmaps.org/) grouping in the United States has already published results from extensive joint studies of the human plasma lipidome
[15] and a mouse macrophage cell line [16,17]. A more conservative goal in lipidomics is to compare batches of samples and to define differences in their lipidome following treatment or according to phenotype. Such analysis can be used in an attempt to identify biomarkers of disease state, disease progression, or response to therapy [18,19].
