Lipidomics for studying metabolism

Many thousands of lipid species exist and their metabolism is interwoven via numerous pathways and networks. These networks can also change in response to cellular environment alterations, such as exercise or development of a disease. Measuring such alterations and understanding the pathways involved is crucial to fully understand cellular metabolism. Such demands have catalysed the emergence of lipidomics, which enables the large-scale study of lipids using the principles of analytical chemistry. Mass spectrometry, largely due to its analytical power and rapid development of new instruments and techniques, has been widely used in lipidomics and greatly accelerated advances in the field. This Review provides an introduction to lipidomics and describes some common, but important, cellular metabolic networks that can aid our understanding of metabolic pathways. Some representative applications of lipidomics for studying lipid metabolism and metabolic diseases are highlighted, as well as future applications for the use of lipidomics in studying metabolic pathways.