LIPID MAPS® Highlights

Keystone Symposia: Lipids in Cellular Function and Disease

10th March 2025

Apr 06–09, 2025 | Beaver Run Conference Center, Breckenridge, CO, United States

This conference will bring together lipid researchers to explore the latest advances in basic underpinning science through to clinical translation, while training the next generation of lipid researchers.

1. Sessions will cover emerging discoveries on:
2. 1) Signaling, where lipids play mechanistically important roles in cancer, metabolic disorders, and neurological disorders.
3. 2) Biochemistry of circulating and vascular lipids and their metabolic pathways.
4. 3) The role of lipids in inflammation and ferroptosis.
5. 4) Lipidomics research in the context of infectious disease, in terms of the host, viruses, novel bacterial lipids and anti-microbial resistance.

Scientific Organizers: Valerie B. O'Donnell, Junken Aoki and Vytas A. Bankaitis

Lipid Calc App now available on Android

28th January 2025

Lipid Calculator is an app, developed by Robert C Murphy, that can calculate the accurate mono-isotopic molecular weight of tens of thousands lipid molecular species as well as positive and negative molecular ions and several molecular ion adducts.

We can now share an updated Apple version and a brand new Android Version !!

LIPID MAPS Webinars moving to TEAMs

2nd January 2025

We have made the switch from hosting the LIPID MAPS Webinars via Zoom to the TEAMs platform. Hopefully this will be a relatively simple switch and you should be able to join simply and still be able to participate in the Q&A section as normal.

What these changes might mean for you:

- There might be a delay in receiving your registration email

- If you are joining from a mobile you will have to download the app

- You may be required to ‘log in’ if your browser knows you have an account

Happy Holidays!

23rd December 2024

Holiday season is upon us, so LIPID MAPS would like to take the time to wish you all a joyful Festive Period and a Happy New Year!

As always we thank you for your continued support throughout this year and look forward to creating new resources for you soon!!

Become a beta tester for the new android version of the Lipid Calc App

21st October 2024

Do you have an android phone and a Google account? Could you spare a few minutes to test the Lipid Calc App and provide some short feedback?

Testing is an integral part of the app development process and allows the Lipid Calc App to be made widely available.

Please sign up by providing your name and email address, and someone will be in touch shortly to arrange the rest.

LIPID MAPS & WikiPathways Pathway Curation project

25th September 2024

An ELIXIR-funded project to curate lipid pathways, concluded in June 2024 after two and a half years.

The primary objective, of the collaboration between the WikiPathways open science platform and the LIPID MAPS community, was to curate high-quality biochemical knowledge on lipid metabolism by engaging lipid experts worldwide. The project was further enhanced by the EpiLipidNET COST network to curate lipid signalling pathways.

This initiative significantly boosted community interest and ensured the sustained co-curation of high-quality biochemical knowledge on lipid metabolism. A total of 24 pathways were curated/ updated through the project and are now available on both, LIPID MAPS and WikiPathways platforms.

ALERT: Downtime of LIPID MAPS Webpage

17th September 2024

There will be essential work taking place on our servers on Tuesday 24th of September. The work will cause intermittent connectivity issues that could last for several hours. During this time LIPID MAPS will temporarily go offline.

We apologise for any inconvenience this causes.

New Isotopic Distribution Tool

5th September 2024

For a long time, you’ve been able to view the isotopic distribution for a molecule in LMSD by clicking on its formula on the relevant page of our main database, LMSD.

We’ve now added an interface where you can input the formula of a molecule of interest and directly see the isotopic distribution, reflecting the probability of the occurrence of different isotopes being incorporated within your molecule.

Tools Guide Update – General call

22nd July 2024

It have been almost 2 years since the first version of the Lipidomics Tools Guide was published and made available via LIPID MAPS website. 

With the constant development of computational solutions for lipidomics data processing, we are planning to update the Guide with new open-access tools and software, which serve the lipidomics community. If you are interested in sharing your tools and software, please fill the form below before September 1st and we will contact you directly. 

Remember; Lipidomics Tools Guide aims to support researchers with varying degree of bioinformatics expertise, thus, to be included in the Guide the tool needs to have graphical user interface and have open access for academic users.

LIPID MAPS Network Updates 20th and 21st July

14th July 2024

There will be essential work taking place to the network on Saturday 20th July. The work will begin at 10am BST and will cause intermittent connectivity issues that could last for several hours. During this time LIPID MAPS will temporarily go offline. Please note services should also be considered at risk on Sunday 21st July in case of any issues.

We apologise for any inconvenience this causes, but this work is essential and unavoidable to ensure network performance, security and stability.

Professor Bengt Samuelsson (1934 - 2024)

9th July 2024

We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Professor Bengt Samuelsson, Nobel laureate and former president of Karolinska Institute.  Professor Samuelsson was co-discoverer of prostaglandins, with Sune Bergström, and a founder of the field of lipid mediators.  These hormone-like substances regulate several important processes in the body relevant to health and disease, including development, inflammation, allergies, glaucoma and cardiovascular disease and are the targets of numerous drug therapies. 

We send our sincere condolences to his family and all his friends. 

LIPID MAPS Network Updates 20th and 21st July

1st July 2024

There will be essential work taking place to the network on Saturday 20th July. The work will begin at 10am BST and will cause intermittent connectivity issues that could last for several hours. During this time LIPID MAPS will temporarily go offline. Please note services should also be considered at risk on Sunday 21st July in case of any issues.

We apologise for any inconvenience this causes, but this work is essential and unavoidable to ensure network performance, security and stability.

Chirality change for lipids in LMSD

5th June 2024

A recent paper in Angewandte Chemie by the Minnaard group highlighted that the long-established chirality of Mycolipanolic acid was incorrect. Stereoselective chemical synthesis of this mycobacterial cell-wall constituent proved the chirality of the alpha-methyl and beta-hydroxy groups needed to be inverted.

Accordingly, we have revised the structure in LMSD and that of all those molecules containing mycolipanolic acid, around 750 lipids in total. 

Shorthand nomenclature updates

6th May 2024

Recent research strongly suggests that there may be many more bile acid amidates (bile acids conjugated with amino acids) in nature than previously thought. We have updated the shorthand nomenclature to include these as a suffix of; Xxx, where Xxx is the three letter amino acid code. For instance Phenylalanocholic Acid (LMST05050056) is now ST 24:1;O4;Phe.

For consistency, glycine conjugate shorthand now ends; Gly rather than ;G. Similarly, taurine conjugates change from ;T to ;Tau to remove any potential ambiguity. 

We have also updated the shorthand for bile acid conjugates, which previously included the leaving oxygen that is displaced to form the amide bond. This has been removed such that only the oxygens present in the bile acid residue are enumerated. For example the shorthand for glycocholic acid (LMST05030001) changes from ST 24:1;O5;G to ST 24:1;O4;Gly.

Steroid structure drawing tool expanded

1st April 2024

We have recently made extensive updates to our structure drawing tool for sterols. 

It now enables drawing of over 20 different sterol cores including the steroid hormones, bile acids and plant sterols such as withanolides. You can use this tool to draw sterol structures defining the stereochemistry of substituents and positions of double bonds. 

The tool produces an image downloadable as PNG, along with the formula and systematic name.

EpiLipidNET joins the Community forum

4th March 2024

We are thrilled to announce that the EpiLipidNET community are joining the LIPID MAPS forum.  

The community forum, will be an informal platform to source and provide information about various aspects of epilipid analysis – from analytical methods to biochemical pathways integration. If you have new suggestions and ideas for new initiatives; you can post these directly on this forum.  You can also use the community forum to start informal conversations on any (epi)lipids of your interest, their biological significance, applied methodologies and data analysis strategies, connecting with others in the field.

View 3D models in LMSD

5th February 2024

You are now able to visualise 3D models of the lipids in LMSD. Once on a specific lipid page, click the ‘view 3D’ button on the bottom left of the lipid structure image.  A rotating 3D representation of the molecule will appear. You can fully control the rotation and scaling of the model with your mouse to alter the view point. Remember that these models are a calculated ‘snapshot’ and only one of many possible conformations available to molecules with many rotatable bonds. 

Similarity 'Tanimoto' Search in LMSD

2nd January 2024

We’ve just improved our structure search of LMSD, our main database of lipid structures.  Previously, you were able to sketch your molecule in the search (structure) interface and find exact matches, or hits in LMSD where your query is a part of that molecule. Now, you can find hits which are 'similar to' your query using the Tanimoto similarity search, by defining the threshold for that similarity in the 'search-type' drop-down menu and entering Tanimoto/Similarity.

Happy holiday season!

24th December 2023

Everyone here at LIPID MAPS would like to wish you all a

Merry Christmas / Feliz Navidad / Buon Natale / Frohe Weihnachten / / メリー クリスマス / Joyeux Noel / Feliz Natal / Nadolig Llawen / عيد ميلاد مجيد / Wesołych świąt Bożego Narodzenia / 聖誕快樂 / Happy Holidays 

and a joyful and healthy New Year!!! 

We would also like to thank you for your ongoing support. 

LIPID MAPS becomes an ELIXIR Core Resource and Deposition Database

18th December 2023

LIPID MAPS are thrilled to announce that we have been successful in obtaining accreditations from ELIXIR!! 

LIPID MAPS has been added to ELIXIR Core Data Resources (CDRs) and has also been awarded the status of an ELIXIR Deposition Database (EDDs). ELIXIR CDRs are European life science data resources that are important to biological and biomedical research and long-term preservation of biological data and ELIXIR EDDs are key European databases recommended for the deposition of experimental data.

Accreditation success for LIPID MAPS

11th December 2023

LIPID MAPS are thrilled to announce that we have been successful in obtaining an accreditation from Global Biodata Coalition (GBC).

LIPID MAPS is one of the additional 15 Global Core Biodata Resources (GCBRs) that join the existing 37, forming an important focus of the GBC’s work with global life science funders to better understand the challenges and needs for biodata resource long-term sustainability.

New publication from LIPID MAPS

6th November 2023

Our recent paper in Nucleic Acids Research database issue describes the updates to LIPID MAPS databases, tools and engagement that have taken place over the last few years. It describes the expansion of LMSD with richer metadata including display of reactions, programmatic access and improved FAIR compliance. It also describes other LIPID MAPS databases, tools and the training and engagement we’re doing.

Lipid nomenclature update

2nd October 2023

A word on the use of the "C" prefix in lipid shorthand nomenclature (e.g "C16:0"). Some institutions and companies use it to describe acyl carnitines whereas others use it for fatty acids. This ambiguous nomenclature should be avoided by choosing "CAR" (e.g "CAR 16:0") for acyl carnitines and "FA" (e.g "FA 16:0") for fatty acids. More details on recommendations by the Lipidomics Standards Initiative and International Lipid Classification and Nomenclature Committee are found in the LIPID MAPS nomenclature section.

More crosslinks from LMSD pages

4th September 2023

Lipids are substrates, products and inhibitors of enzymes, some are needed to stabilise membrane proteins. They're often found in complex with the 3D structures of proteins in the Protein Data Bank and we've added links from LMSD to our ELIXIR partners, the Protein Data Bank in Europe, where we have a molecule in common across our respective databases. 

LMSD reaches a new milestone

24th July 2023

The LIPID MAPS Structure Database is our flagship database containing fully characterised structures of biologically relevant lipids. Recently, that  database reached the milestone of exceeding 48000 unique lipid structures. A paper from the Blanksby Group describing lots of previously unknown fatty acids got us over the line. It's a really exciting time in lipid mass spectrometry with new techniques enabling better characterisation of lipids being developed. These will no doubt keep us busy adding new lipids to LMSD for the foreseeable future.

New reactions in BioPAN

3rd July 2023

We have added new reactions to BioPAN to accommodate the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway. 

We have also added the ability to analyse datasets containing lipids with molecular species annotation (for example PC 16:0_12:0). for cases where the acyl chain identities are known.

New headgroup in our Structure Drawing tool

8th June 2023

We've recently added the facility to draw Phosphatidyl-L-threonine (PT) in a standardised form to our structure drawing tool. PT is closely related structurally and metabolically to phosphatidylserine and is a minor component of eukaryotic membranes and present in bacterial membranes too.  It is known to be important in the membranes of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which causes toxoplasmosis. 

Upcoming events

2nd May 2023

EpiLipidNET - The 4th annual meeting will take place from 10th to 12th of July in Toulouse, France.

Find more information and register here

EAS - Our very own Dr M. Conroy & Prof. W Griffiths will present at this years Lipotoxicity Course in Prague on the 8th and 9th of June.

A new structure drawing tool

5th March 2023

A new glycan drawing & mass calculation tool for glycosylceramides has been created. By inputting an LM_ID of a generic glycosylceramide, a SpingoMap ID present in LMSD or a full glycan name this tool takes a glycosylceramide glycan sequence and generates all possible intermediates, starting from glucosyl-ceramide and also gives the mass of the glycan group present.

Query retention time data on Metabolomics Workbench

6th February 2023

A new tool on Metabolomics Workbench enables searching chromatography metadata to view retention time information, chromatography conditions, and instrumentation. It is possible view data for one particular metabolite or compare data for a pair of metabolites. This information might help confirm the identity of a compound with reference to other observations of it's chromatographic behaviour.

New paper on choosing informatics software and tools for lipidomics

5th January 2023

The many different choices of software and tools for analysing lipidomics data can be confusing or even daunting for a researcher. A recent paper in Nature Methods "Guiding the choice of informatics software and tools for lipidomics research applications" from the LIPID MAPS team and many others provides a guide to navigating through this complex area, and includes our interactive online portal listing open-access tools with a graphical user interface.

Nature Methods Paper

Community Forum

11th October 2022

We are delighted to announce the LIPID MAPS community forum.

The community forum is an informal way to provide feedback on the LIPID MAPS databases and resources. Have you suggestions for new initiatives; would you like to ask for advice on how to use the resources; or send through information on items that need updating or correcting?

You can also use the community forum to start informal conversations on lipidomics in general and link up with others to create discussion amongst the community.

You can view online discussions, and/or create your own profile so you can freely post questions or comments. 

We look forward to you joining us on the forum and contributing to our lipid conversations! 

Look-up tables for shorthand notation

9th August 2022

We have produced easy look-up tables for shorthand notation for lipid mass-spectrometric (MS) data. These will allow you to quickly find the correct shorthand notation for lipid data fitting validated MS-output, depending on the resolution of your experimental data.

The tables are based on Liebisch et al. J. Lipid Res. 61, 1–17 (2020).  This “fast-track” version presents succinct application rules and provides examples for hierarchical shorthand notation.

LIPID MAPS SPARQL Endpoint

17th June 2022

The LIPID MAPS SPARQL Endpoint is now available! 

You will be able to programmatically query LIPID MAPS and our partners. More information and examples can be found here:https://lipidmaps.org/resources/sparql

We gratefully acknowledge members of the ELIXIR 2021 Hackathon “FAIR lipids” for collaborative working on this project, with specific mention of Maksim Kolchin, Jerven Bolleman (SIB), Denise Slenter (WikiPathways) and Egon Willighagen (WikiPathways).

Search Functionality

27th April 2022

We have recently updated the search facility of the LIPID MAPS homepage. We have added auto-complete functionality, so as you type, the search will indicate which areas of the LIPID MAPS databases contain the term you’ve typed, enabling you to get to the result you’re looking for more efficiently.

We’ve also incorporated RefMet into the search, which will standardise many non-standard lipid names prior to the search (eg DAG C36:3 will become DG 36:3), enabling lipids described this way to be found more easily.

New lipid classes added to COMP_DB

15th March 2022

COMP_DB, the LIPID MAPS computationally-generated database of "bulk" lipid species has just been extended to include new classes of betaine lipids which occur in organisms such as algae, bryophytes and fungi.

Whilst LMSD contains fully characterised lipids, COMP_DB species indicate only the number of carbons and double bond equivalents, but not chain positions or double bond regiochemistry and geometry.

In many lipidomics studies, this is the level of characterisation achieved, so expanding COMP_DB to include DGCC, DGTA and DGTS lipid classes will help those working on these to identify potential lipids in their data.

NEW: Reactions explorer

9th February 2022

We are developing a reactions explorer to visualise and obtain information on biochemical reactions and metabolic pathways involving lipids.

In the explorer, you can navigate through the complex network of lipid reactions and use the filtering tools to quickly find relevant reactions for your lipid class of interest.

Our lipid reactions database is linked to the LMSD database so you can now find on specific lipid pages reactions in which they might take part.

Lots more carotenoids in LMSD

20th January 2022

We've added a splash of colour by including a lot more carotenoids in LMSD over the past few months. 

Nearly 700 of the molecules curated in http://carotenoiddb.jp/ but previously not part of LMSD are now incorporated.

Most are to be found in the tetraterpene class https://www.lipidmaps.org/lmsd_search/60107 

New classes of betaine lipids

29th November 2021

Research over the last few years has shown the abundance of diacylglycerols with betaine headgroups in organisms such as seaweeds, algae and fungi. Recognising this, we’ve updated LMSD and added classes of betaine mono- and di-radylglycerols in the glycerolipids category. Existing betaine lipids have been moved into these classes. 

Due to the experimental difficulty, the position of acyl chains, and double bonds within them, has yet to be determined for many betaine lipids, so there are doubtless many more to add to LMSD in coming years.

**Job Alert**

2nd November 2021

We have an opportunity to join the LIPID MAPS team, as a Biocurator.  

The role will provide core support for a new curation project, building lipid biochemical pathways in LIPID MAPS (http://www.lipidmaps.org) and WikiPathways (https://www.wikipathways.org/index.php/WikiPathways).  

This post is funded by ELIXIR, based at Cardiff University and may support remote working.

For further information and to apply, please visit https://bit.ly/3GIPKWv

'Scalable Curation' project

16th September 2021

We are delighted to announce a successful award in collaboration with WikiPathways and EpiLipidNet from the ELIXIR Data Platform Implementation Study call for ‘Scalable Curation’.

This award funds a full time curator to support expert community curation of lipids and pathways/networks for lipidomics. This work will add expert-curated and reviewed pathways to the WikiPathways lipid portal (https://www.wikipathways.org/index.php/Portal:Lipids), and link reactions back to the new LIPID MAPS reaction database. New Pathway curation will enable development of tools for lipidomics systems biology. 

This award will start in January 2022.

New look to the LMSD lipid pages

26th May 2021

Spring School Recordings are now Live!

10th May 2021

Visit our LIPID MAPS YouTube channel to listen to the whole week of recordings. There are over 40 presentations for you to watch, with 33 speakers who are top-level experts in lipid biology and lipidomics. The presentations include a variety of tools, resources and research.
All of the presentations are clearly displayed so you can choose which themes/topics you would like to watch!
Our YouTube channel hosts our live webinar series, and a vast array of tutorials, including BioPAN. Plus you can listen to our recently launched Podcasts with Bill Christie and Matthew Conroy.
Don’t forget if you subscribe to our YouTube channel you will receive alerts when we upload new recordings!
Go to YouTube

Lipid Calculator

9th April 2021

Lipid Calculator is an iPhone app that can calculate the accurate mono-isotopic molecular weight of tens of thousands lipid molecular species as well as positive and negative molecular ions and several molecular ion adducts.
This application provided by LIPIDMAPS can be used to support lipid biochemists in their lipidomic investigations when electrospray ionization mass spectrometry is employed.
LipidCalc can calculate the accurate mono-isotopic molecular weight of tens of thousands lipid molecular species as well as positive and negative molecular ions and several molecular ion adducts.
View in App Store

12th March 2021

We are looking for experts in lipid biochemistry to help create a new knowledge base.
During the next 6 months LIPID MAPS will be working with WikiPathways to support expert community curation of lipids and pathways/networks for lipidomics. We plan to create new pathways and then integrate these with LIPID MAPS Structure Database (LMSD) to enable development of tools for lipidomics systems biology.

To do this, we need our curation team to work with domain experts in specific lipid pathways so we can capture high quality accurate biochemical information, including reactions, genes, organism/tissue localisation of lipids and their reactions.
Are you working on a lipid metabolic pathway, and are interested to be involved?
Curated information will be tagged with publications and contributors will be credited.
Please get in touch with Valerie O’Donnell: o-donnellvb@cardiff.ac.uk

Lipid Trends has arrived!

9th March 2021

This new Lipid Trends page, highlights novel and exciting articles and research trends, that are of interest to the lipid community. A curated collection of hot picks from the world of lipid research will be available for you!

Suggestions for articles to be presented on Lipid Trends may submitted here. The committee will review articles and curate the upcoming trends.

Standardizing Reference Nomenclature

30th November 2020

RefMet provides a standardized reference nomenclature for metabolite species (including over 100,000 lipid annotations) identified by analytical chemistry techniques.

The recent Nature Methods publication "RefMet: a reference nomenclature for metabolomics" describes this resource which is available as an online name-conversion tool on this website.

22nd November 2020

LIPID MAPS is delighted to announce the development of new partnerships from our recent sponsors from both Merck and SCIEX.
Merck have become sponsors of the webinar series, whilst SCIEX are our first sponsors of the Spring School.
We would like to thank both companies for their support and look forward to working with them throughout 2021. The sponsorship enables us to forge partnerships and assists with the sustainability of LIPID MAPS, a community driven free resource.
Find out more Webinars Spring School

LIPID MAPS® Job Vacancy

16th November 2020

LIPID MAPS® is looking for a biocurator to co-ordinate and either lead or support, based on level of expertise, on a major curation and tool development project, focused on network and pathway analysis of lipidomics data at lipid, protein and gene level that will be hosted on LIPID MAPS. Part of the role will include linking with other external lipid/pathways/small module databases and participate in collaborative work to generate information for new interoperable resources. This will include updating current content in LIPID MAPS gene and proteome database.
Job Advert

New publications from LIPID MAPS

14th October 2020

How to describe a lipid by name? Our new paper in J. Lipid Res. on Classification, Nomenclature and Shorthand Notation for MS-derived lipid structures details how to describe lipids at all levels of structural annotation, with COMP_DB updated to facilitate Bulk searches for MS data.

Updated LipidFinder 2.0, software for post processing lipidomics MS data is now available on the LIPIDMAPS website and described in Bioinformatics. New features include artefact filtering, contaminant removal, FDA, bulk-structure identification and API link with XCMS.
Classification Paper LipidFinder 2.0

New nomenclature tools

10th June 2020

New tools, aimed at facilitating data sharing and cross-study comparison of lipidomics data sets:

• Convert lipid names to standardized nomenclature
• Displays levels of lipid structural resolution

(1955-2020)

6th March 2020

We are devastated to learn of the passing of our Co-PI, mentor and friend Professor Michael Wakelam, Director of the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK. Professor Wakelam brought a wealth of experience and dedication to LIPID MAPS and will be greatly missed by all of us.
We send our sincere condolences to his family and all who knew him.
Tribute Page

New tool available on LIPID MAPS®: BioPAN

1st March 2020

BioPan allows you to perform a pathway analysis from a lipidomics dataset. In this analysis, systematic changes in lipid pathways can be explored at different levels: lipid class and lipid species. Those pathways will be highlighted and changes in enzyme activity will also be predicted.
View BioPAN

LIPID MAPS® Webinar Series: Progress in Quantitative Lipidomics

1st February 2020

Phospholipids and Glycerides to be presented by Professor Emeritus Robert "Bob" Murphy

LIPID MAPS® Webinar Series: Progress in Quantitative Lipidomics

1st January 2020

Phospholipids and Glycerides to be presented by Professor Emeritus Robert "Bob" Murphy