Applied Bioinformatics

The applied bioinformatics task group within the International Lipidomics Society aims at facilitating the development of bioinformatics tools and workflows to foster the exchange of quantitative and qualitative lipidomics data. This will be achieved by providing standardized data formats for data exchange between vendor software, the research community, bioinformatics applications, and public data repositories. Moreover, we aim at providing curated, high-quality datasets to facilitate the development and comparison of competitive and state-of-the-art bioinformatics algorithms and tools for lipid identification and quantification.

These goals are only achievable by continuing and intensifying the existing efforts for standardization of lipid nomenclature, data exchange formats, primarily, but not exclusively for lipidomics based on mass spectrometry and the curation and maintenance of high-quality reference databases for quantitative lipidomics, as well as structural and functional ontologies thereof.

By reaching these goals, we ensure better integration with other “omics” for more holistic and dynamic views onto the functions and roles of lipid metabolism in the context of systems biology and personalized medicine. However, others have paved the way before us and have drawn the scientific community’s attention to the necessity of standardization of and FAIR access to primary and secondary research data. We thus also collaborate closely with existing societies, such as the HUPO-PSI and the Metabolomics Society to ensure alignment on common goals and to foster a combined momentum in moving the field forwards.