‘ATLAS OF LIPIDS’- A POWERFUL

TECHNOLOGY FOR VISUALIZING LIPID

NETWORKS
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 in to lipids. Lipids have major functions like
storage , regulations 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 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) to comprehensively extract information on 8,051 different lipids in 117 categories
from 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 the lipids.