Lipidomics from an analytical perspective.

The global non-targeted analysis of various biomolecules in a variety of sample sources gained momentum in recent years. Defined as the study of the full lipid complement of cells, tissues and organisms, lipidomics is currently evolving out of the shadow of the more established omics sciences including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. In analogy to the latter, lipidomics has the potential to impact on biomarker discovery, drug discovery/development and system knowledge, amongst others. The tools developed by lipid researchers in the past, complemented with the enormous advancements made in recent years in mass spectrometry and chromatography, and the implementation of sophisticated (bio)-informatics tools form the basis of current lipidomics technologies.