Lipidomics articles from across Nature Portfolio

Lipid changes across the lifespan and their role in health and longevity are incompletely understood. Here, Tsugawa and colleagues conduct untargeted lipidomics across 13 sample types and four ages in mice, considering sex and microbiome dependencies. This study provides a comprehensive resource of lipid changes with aging and highlights regulatory metabolic components, such as the enzyme UGT8, as potentially responsible for male-specific glycolipid biosynthesis in the kidney.

Aging dynamics of complex lipids are incompletely understood. Here Janssens and colleagues describe lipids that change with age across ten tissues in mice. Notably, bis(monoacylglycerol)phosphate accumulated with age. This lipid also accumulated in muscle of older humans, and reduced upon a short bout of exercise.

Morgan, Pernes and colleagues perform mass spectrometry-based targeted lipidomics and provide a comprehensive lipid profile of human and mouse immune cells, which they then show confer differential ferroptosis susceptibilities.

Synthesis of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) by Pol I sustains cell growth but is highly energy demanding. Here the authors show that curbing of Pol I activity lowers systemic energy utilization and delays metabolic aging by reducing triglyceride lipolysis and mitochondrial oxygen consumption.

IL-10 exerts its anti-inflammatory activity in macrophages by increasing the expression of enzymes that promote fatty acid desaturation and downstream regulation of the transcription factor REL.

Advancements in plasma lipidomic profiling increase specificity of measurements but pose challenges in aligning datasets created at different times or platforms. Here the authors present a predictive framework for harmonising such datasets with different levels of granularity in their lipid measurements.

The Periodic Table of Food Initiative addresses food biomolecular composition information gaps through a standardized, accessible and enabling platform based on analytical tools, data and capacity building. Data from 1,650 foods serve as starting point for demonstrating the capacity of this initiative to contribute to nutrition, health and food systems transformations.

Half a century after its discovery, platelet-activating factor (PAF) is now recognized as a ferroptosis-activating phospholipid that contributes to tubule cell damage and nephron loss in acute kidney injury.

In this Tools of the Trade article, Yohan Lee (Stachowiak lab) describes a method to generate free-standing planar lipid membranes for the study of membrane-associated protein phase separation.

We demonstrated increased phospholipid peroxidation due to the formation of monolysocardiolipin–cytochrome c complexes in tafazzin-deficient models of Barth syndrome. We found that a specific anti-peroxidase agent inhibited this complex and improved mitochondrial respiration. Thus, targeting the deleterious peroxidase activity offers a potential therapeutic approach to treat Barth syndrome.

Lipid remodeling, from fatty acid transport and de novo lipid synthesis, is necessary for megakaryocyte differentiation and platelet production. Dietary saturated fatty acids, impaired fatty acid transport and/or dysfunction in lipid biogenesis can contribute to low platelet counts.

The Mediterranean diet correlates with increased human lifespan; it is rich in foods with high levels of cis-monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), such as olive oil. A study now shows that MUFAs stimulate a lipid droplet–peroxisome organelle network to decrease lipid oxidation and protect cell membranes during ageing.