Welcome to the web portal for Lipidomics Informatics for Life Sciences (LIFS)

Even with lipid content of over 10% in the human body, lipids were not the central scientific focus during the last decade. However, more and more evidence proves that non-genetically determined molecules such as metabolites and lipids play a critical role in cellular regulation. Today, it is evident that lipids are not only crucial for energy homeostasis and as an environmental-cellular barrier but also that they represent a central part of our signal transduction machinery.
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What do you need to do with your lipid data?

Our mission is to provide the bioinformatic framework to understand lipids in context and create an integrative systems biology view for lipid research.

Check out the tools we develop and provide below!

LIFS workflow in four steps: 1 raw data; 2 identify and quantify, with LipidXplorer then lxPostman for shotgun data and LipidCreator then Skyline for targeted data; 3 explore and enrich: LipidSpace and Lipidome Projector take the lipid results, MAPtoGO takes lipid features with their abundances together with features and counts from other omics; 4 report and share: the Lipidomics Checklist reports the methods of step 2 and provides the mzTab-M metadata that goes with the results into LipidCompass. Goslin keeps lipid names consistent across all steps; mzTab-M and mzQC are the standard formats for results and quality-control data, checked by the mzTab Validator. Each LIFS service is marked with its de.NBI lifecycle phase: lxPostman and LipidCompass are emerging, all other LIFS tools and standards are mature.
All LIFS tools are open source and free to use; Skyline is developed by the MacCoss Lab.

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All tools & standards

The full LIFS suite, in workflow order.

Step 2

Identify & quantify

Shotgun data: LipidXplorer, then lxPostman. Targeted data: LipidCreator, then Skyline.

LipidXplorer screenshot

LipidXplorer

Desktop Win macOS Linux

Identifies lipids from shotgun (direct-infusion) high-resolution MS data via user-defined MFQL queries.

More Info v1.5

lxPostman

Web app

R Shiny application to post-process, quality-control and quantify LipidXplorer output.

More Info R Shiny
LipidCreator screenshot

LipidCreator

Desktop Win Linux

Builds targeted MS assays and in-silico spectral libraries across 60+ lipid classes, then exports them to Skyline.

More Info Skyline tool
Skyline screenshot with the LipidCreator plugin

Skyline

Desktop Win External tool

Opens vendor raw files, integrates peaks and quantifies the transitions designed in LipidCreator. Developed by the MacCoss Lab, University of Washington.

Download (external site) MacCoss Lab

Step 3

Explore & enrich

Compare whole lipidomes, find the lipids that differ, and test lipid and other omics features for GO-term enrichment.

LipidSpace screenshot

LipidSpace

Desktop REST API Win macOS Linux

Compares whole lipidomes through a structural-space model, with machine-learning feature selection, QC and an interactive GUI.

More Info v1.2.2
Lipidome Projector overview

Lipidome Projector

Web app

Interactive visualisation and analysis of lipidomics datasets in a neural-network vector space built from LIPID MAPS and SwissLipids.

More Info browser

MAPtoGO

Web app

GO-term enrichment for lipid, metabolite, protein and transcript features with their abundances or counts, honouring the hierarchy of lipid shorthand names.

More Info browser

Step 4

Report & share

Report the methods behind your results, validate your files and deposit results and metadata together.

Lipidomics Checklist screenshot

Lipidomics Checklist

Web app

Reports the analytical, identification and quantification methods behind your results, step by step. The basis for mzTab-M metadata; PDF export and an optional Zenodo DOI.

Start checklist (external site) PDF / DOI

LipidCompass

Web app Beta

A database for collecting, querying and sharing curated quantitative lipidomics datasets: results together with their method metadata. In beta: sign in and an account is created for you.

More Info REST API
mzTab Validator screenshot

mzTab Validator

Web app Library

Web validator and REST API for mzTab 2.0-M and mzTab 1.0 reporting files.

More Info REST API
screenshot

mzTab-M

Library

A standard format for reporting quantitative mass spectrometry metabolomics results in a tab-separated file.

Read the spec (external site) HUPO-PSI
screenshot

mzQC

Library

A standard for reporting and exchanging quality control metrics for mass spectrometry runs and datasets.

Read the spec (external site) HUPO-PSI

Every step

Lipid names

One naming standard, built into LipidCreator, lxPostman and LipidSpace.

Goslin screenshot

Goslin

Web app Library

Parses the many lipid nomenclatures and serialises them back to standardised LIPID MAPS shorthand. Libraries in C++, Python, Java and R.

More Info C++ / Py / Java / R
Not sure which tool fits? Please reach out, we are happy to help you! Ask for support

Skyline screenshot cropped from Fig. 1c of Peng, B., Kopczynski, D., Pratt, B.S. et al. LipidCreator workbench to probe the lipidomic landscape. Nat Commun 11, 2057 (2020), licensed under CC BY 4.0.

LIFS Training Workshop at Lipidomics Forum 2026

Written by Nils Hoffmann on May 03, 2026. Posted in Training

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