Completed Cells, Biochemistry & Physiology Diabetes, Hormones & Metabolism

LIPID MAPS Resource and Database

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation Cardiff University
Funding £1.4M
Period Jan 2017 — Jan 2022

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A single database that catalogues every fat molecule in human cells—the largest of its kind in the world—is about to move from the United States to the United Kingdom to keep it alive. Lipids (fats) are not just energy stores. They build cell membranes, act as signalling molecules, and drive diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disorders. But unlike genes or proteins, lipids have no universal naming system or central repository. Researchers studying them have long struggled to compare results or build on each other’s work. The LIPID MAPS resource solved that by defining the complete “lipidome” of human and mouse cells and creating a freely accessible online portal with standardised names, structures, and analytical tools. The US funding that sustained it for over a decade has run out, and no replacement exists there. If this move succeeds, the database will continue to serve as the global backbone for lipid research. UK and international lipidomics centres will retain access to a curated classification system and structure library that no other resource provides. The work is primarily infrastructure—it does not test a new drug or treatment—but without it, the growing field of lipidomics would lose its shared reference point, slowing progress in understanding how fats contribute to metabolic disease.

View original technical description
LIPID Metabolites And Pathways Strategy (LIPID MAPS) is a resource and database created in 2003 via a 10-yr "glue-grant" from National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH) to identify and quantitate all of the major - and many minor - lipids in mammalian cells using a systems biology approach, as well as advance the emerging field of lipidomics. This was accomplished by generating numerous experimental approaches to define the "lipidome" in human and mouse tissues and by developing and maintaining a website which now acts as the global portal for nomenclature, databases, tools, protocols, standards, tutorials, meetings, publications and other resources for the international lipid research community ("Lipidomics GateWay", http://www.lipidmaps.org). Its importance to the field was recently highlighted in Science (https://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/788.short). The "glue-grant" was followed by a legacy grant (expire in July 2016) covering only maintenance of the website, databases and tools. Given the extremely challenging US funding environment, no further options exist locally. This proposal aims to maintain/further develop the resource, and move it to the UK to preserve its internationally recognized classification system and curated lipid structure database, the largest in the world. This will provide essential support for UK and worldwide lipidomics centres.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Valerie O'Donnell (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Systems Lipidomics tools and resources for biomedical research; LIPID MAPS.
Mass Spectrometry Based Lipidomics and Metabolomics to Drive Bioscience Discovery
LipID: A Lipid Annotation Tool for Membrane Proteins
Metabo
MetaboLights: Creating the missing Metabolomics community resource

Original classification

Biomedical Resources Grant

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.