Since the appearance of the term genomics in the mid-1980s, a number of different “omics” [1] have been emerging in the field of biology. The metabolomics is one of them, and tries to quantify and characterize all the metabolites present in a biological system, as well as their interrelation with their regulatory factors (proteins, RNAs, genes). The extreme variety of metabolites present in a cell or tissue makes it impossible to approach all metabolites quantitatively with a single methodological approach and for this reason lipidomics can be defined as a branch of the metabolomics specialised in the study of lipids. Like all omics, the lipidomics avoids a reductionist vision when studying biological phenomena. In other words, in contrast to studies in which a prior hypothesis is put forward on the involvement of a reduced number of variables, in this case lipids, in a process (studies of directed hypotheses, also known as “targeted”), the capacity of the lipidomics to quantify a high number of lipids makes it possible to understand integrally the functioning of the biological processes studied and the generation of new working hypotheses.

“The molecular characterization of lipids in a biological system, as well as their function and study their relationship with the expression of enzymes and proteins involved in their metabolism and gene regulation.”

 (Spener, F. y col. Editorial: What is lipidomics (Eur. J. Lipid Sci. Technol. (2003))

[1] Omics is a neologism that comes from the English, which in Molecular Biology is used as a suffix to refer to the study of all or the whole of something, such as genes, organisms in an ecosystem, proteins, lipids, or even the relationships between them (Wikipedia).