Development and Application of Experimental and Informatic Advances to Characterize the Lipidomes of Diverse Microbial Systems

Lipidomics concerns itself with the large-scale measurement of lipids. This burgeoning field, while showing promise, faces several significant technical, informatic, and biological challenges that severely limit the performance of lipidomics. These challenges are partially driven by the limited benchmarking and thorough validation studies associated with most new fields, as well as intrinsic difficulties in lipid analyses. Some of these weak areas include uncertainties in extraction and sample preparation, inaccurate automated lipid identification/quantification software, and poor statistical and interpretive practices. In my doctoral research, I have sought to improve upon the groundwork others have lain in lipidomics, by developing tools and analyses that will a firmer foundation which can be further improved by research yet to come. Along the way, I have also applied lipidomics to address a variety of important biological questions such as the effect of lipo-chitoogliosaccarides on lipid signaling in fungi, the biogenesis of outermembrane vesicles, and the covalent incorporation of polyfluorinated alkyl substances into bacterial lipids.