Lipids are a broad category of small, fatty or oily molecules, including triglycerides, cholesterol, hormones and some vitamins. In our bodies, they make up cell membranes, act as cellular messengers and store energy; they play key roles in responding to infection and regulating our metabolism.
Our genome is essentially stable. Our proteome, though influenced by our health and environment, is largely dependent on what's encoded by our genes. In contrast, our lipidome can be directly altered, in part, by what we eat and which microbes live inside our gut, making it more malleable and perhaps more responsive to interventions. But the number and variety of lipid molecules—there are at least thousands—has made them hard to study.
"Lipids are very understudied," said Michael Snyder, Ph.D., the Stanford W. Ascherman, MD, FACS Professor in Genetics."They are involved in pretty much everything, but because they're so heterogenous, and there are so many of them, we probably don't know what most lipids really do.", is among the first to deeply dive into the human lipidome and track how it changes under healthy and diseased conditions, particularly in the development of type 2 diabetes.