Systems biology strategies to study lipidomes in health and disease

Lipids are a diverse group of metabolites that have many key biological functions, acting as structural components of cell membranes, energy storage sources and intermediates in signaling pathways. Due to their importance lipids are under tight homeostatic control and exhibit spatial and dynamic complexity at multiple levels. It is thus not surprising that altered lipid metabolism plays important roles in the pathogenesis of most of the common diseases. Lipidomics emerged as a discipline which is dedicated to global study of lipidomes, including pathways and networks of lipids in biological systems. When studying the lipidomes at a systems level, one of the key challenges is how to address the lipid functionality at many physiological levels, from metabolic and signaling pathways to spatial systems such as cellular membranes and lipoprotein particles. Besides the better analytical techniques to study lipids, computational techniques have started to emerge which enable modeling of lipidomes in their spatial and dynamic context. Together, the recent methodological advances in lipidomics have a potential to open novel avenues for predictive and preventive medicine. This review focuses on progress in systems approaches to study lipids in health and disease, with specific emphasis on clinical applications.