Lipidomics for translational skin research: A primer for the uninitiated

Abstract

Healthy skin depends on a unique lipid profile to form a barrier that confers protection and prevents excessive water loss, aids cell-cell communication and regulates cutaneous homoeostasis and inflammation. Alterations in the cutaneous lipid profile can have severe consequences for skin health and have been implicated in numerous inflammatory skin conditions. Thus, skin lipidomics is increasingly of interest, and recent developments in mass spectrometry-based analytical technologies can deliver in-depth investigation of cutaneous lipids, providing insight into their role and mechanism of action. The choice of tissue sampling technique and analytical approach depends on the location and chemistry of the lipid of interest. Lipidomics can be conducted by various mass spectrometry approaches, including different chromatography and ionisation techniques. Targeted mass spectrometry is a sensitive approach for measuring low-abundance signalling lipids, such as eicosanoids, endocannabinoids and ceramides. This approach requires specific extraction, chromatography and mass spectrometry protocols to quantitate the lipid targets. Untargeted mass spectrometry reveals global changes and allows analysis of hundreds of complex lipids across a range of lipid classes, including phospholipids, glycerophospholipids, cholesteryl esters and sphingolipids. Mass spectrometry lipid imaging, including matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation mass spectrometry and desorption electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry, can reveal information about abundance and anatomical distribution of lipids within a single skin sample. Skin lipidomics can provide qualitative and quantitative data on hundreds of biologically relevant lipid species with different properties and activities, all found within a single skin sample, and support translational studies exploring the involvement of lipids in skin health and disease.

Phospholipase A2 in skin biology: new insights from gene-manipulated mice and lipidomics

“…Alterations in the cutaneous lipid profile often have severe consequences for skin health and have been implicated in various skin diseases. Recent developments in lipidomics technologies now allow in-depth qualitative and quantitative investigation of a wide variety of cutaneous lipids, providing insight into their roles and mechanistic actions [63]. Cross-communication between various types of bioactive lipids suggests that their cutaneous activities should be considered as part of a wider metabolic network that can be targeted to maintain skin health, control inflammation, and improve skin pathologies [64].…”

An untargeted lipidomic approach for qualitative determination of latent fingermark glycerides using UPLC-IMS-QToF-MSE

“…Reported TGs in human skin surface lipids range from 27 -families, comprising a wide variety of total fatty acyl chain lengths (34:0 -60:0) and degrees of unsaturation. 27,49,75,81 The extremely diverse range of TG species present in human skin presents many challenges to determining a complete catalogue in latent fingermarks. Emerson et al noted problems due to the number of TGs species (differing by numbers of double bonds) that could occupy a single mass window specified for MS/MS experiments.…”

The Skin Epilipidome in Stress, Aging, and Inflammation

“…The novel gold standard methods for redox-and other epilipidomic investigations are typically based on high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), often in combination with chromatographic separation and require intensive bioinformatic post-processing. These methods and their application on the lipidome, redoxlipidome and especially the skin are the topic of recent reviews that are suggested to the reader (35,66,(79)(80)(81)(82)(83)(84)(85). The emerging technology of mass spectrometry-based imaging (MSI) has the unique feature to reveal the distribution of analytes within a tissue allowing the detection, localization and identification of multiple lipid species in an area of interest.…”