LIPID MAPS

描述（由申请人提供）：脂质在细胞功能和疾病中起核心作用。脂质参与细胞功能的范围直到最近才被认识到远远超出其在能量代谢和膜结构中的既定作用。脂质是一组广泛的小的、两性的分子，根据结构和它们的生物合成起源分为一系列的类。尽管如此，所有这些化合物都具有许多相似的化学和物理性质。由于这些相似之处，处理脂质的代谢途径是复杂和交织的。开发一个能够表征脂质代谢物全球变化的综合代谢组学系统（“脂质组学”）是一项艰巨的任务，但鉴于基因组学和蛋白质组学的全球方法产生的显著回报，这是一项重要的任务。我们的联盟开发了脂质代谢物和途径策略，称为脂质MAPS，应用脂质组学研究的全球集成方法。脂质组学计划在此资助期的具体目标是开发必要的技术，并开展一个综合研究计划，将脂质组学建立为一个功能齐全的研究领域。通过在每个联合实验室中采用一套严格维护的通用生物、生化和分析技术，并通过使用广泛的信息学基础设施，我们将能够集成和分析这个大规模合作项目将产生的大量数据。我们将能够生成“路线图”，定义细胞的所有脂质成分如何通过复杂的脂质组学网络从生物合成到去除，包括它们作为第二信使的重要作用。所有这些信息将与整个研究界共享，并将极大地帮助其他系统的代谢组学的发展。此外，脂质MAPS还有助于药物开发，因为脂质在许多疾病中起着关键作用，包括炎症过程、动脉粥样硬化、阿尔茨海默病、癌症和中风。尽管发展脂质组学领域会带来明显的好处，但目前还没有大规模的国家或国际项目来进行此类研究。我们相信，现在已经有了建立脂质组学领域的实验技术，脂质MAPS代表了实现这一目标的可行策略。这将导致脂质整合到21世纪生物学的总体焦点；也就是说，进入一个完全定量的系统级生物学。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Lipids play a central role in cellular function and disease. The scope of lipid involvement in cellular function has only recently been recognized to extend well beyond its established roles in energy metabolism and membrane structure. Lipids are an extensive group of small, amphipathic molecules that are divided into a series of classes based on structure and their biosynthetic origins. Still, all of these compounds possess many similar chemical and physical properties. Because of these similarities, the metabolic pathways that deal with lipids are complex and intertwined. Developing an integrated metabolomic system capable of characterizing the global changes in lipid metabolites ("lipidomics") is a daunting task but one that it is important to undertake in light of the significant returns produced by the global approaches of genomics and proteomics. Our consortium has developed a Lipid Metabolites And Pathways Strategy, termed LIPID MAPS that applies a global integrated approach to the study of lipidomics. The specific aim of LIPID MAPS for this grant period is to develop the requisite technology and conduct an integrated research program that will establish lipidomics as a fully functioning research field. By employing a rigorously maintained set of common biological, biochemical, and analytical technologies in each of the consortium laboratories, and by using an extensive informatics infrastructure, we will be able to integrate and analyze the large amount of data that will be generated by this large scale collaborative project. We will be able to generate "road maps" that will define how all of the lipid components of a cell move through the complex lipidomic network from biosynthesis to removal, including their important roles as second messengers. All of this information will be shared with the entire research community and should greatly aid in the development of metabolomics for other systems. In addition, LIPID MAPS should also aid in drug development since lipids play critical roles in numerous diseases, including inflammatory processes, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, cancer and stroke. Despite the clear benefits that developing a lipidomics field would produce, no large scale national or international programs for such a study exist. We believe that the experimental technologies are now in hand for establishing the field of lipidomics and that LIPID MAPS represents a viable strategy for achieving this goal. This would lead to the integration of lipids into the general focus of 21st Century biology; namely, into a fully quantitative systems-level biology.