PNNL

Abstract

Recent progress in mass spectrometry (MS) lipidomics has led to a rapid proliferation of studies across biology and biomedicine and facilitating important discoveries. These generate extremely large raw datasets requiring sophisticated tailored solutions to support automated data processing. To address this, numerous software tools have been developed, tailored for specific tasks in the data analysis pipeline. However, for researchers, deciding which approach best suits their application relies on ad hoc testing, which is inefficient and time-consuming. Here, we first review the data processing pipeline, summarizing the number and scope of available tools. Next, to support researchers, LIPID MAPS provides an interactive online portal listing open-access tools with a graphical user interface. This guides users towards appropriate solutions within major areas in data processing including (1) lipid-oriented databases, (2) MS data repositories, (3) analysis of targeted lipidomics datasets, (4) lipid identification, and (5) quantification from untargeted lipidomics datasets, (6) statistical analysis and visualization, and (7) data integration solutions. Detailed descriptions of functions and requirements are provided to guide customized data analysis workflows.