Lipidomics profiling of microbial biofilm

Biofilms are emerging unique patterns of growth that have specific properties, advantages, and a higher level of organization than the free-living microorganism cells during colonization. Lipids play a vital role in energy storage, signal transmission, and biofilm structure. Lipidomics is the last step in “omics” cascade studies; analytical approach typically differs from metabolomics. Lipid profiling provides insight into the distinct fatty acid constituents in the membrane, which in turn attributes to the characteristics of the microorganism. Recently, two significant approaches have been developed for denoting microbial groups via lipid profiles, including analysis of phospholipid fatty acids and all esterified fatty acids. Fractionation of PLFA gives exact estimation on feasible biomass after cell death, while direct analysis method without previous fractionation gives bias lipid evaluation result, because the viability estimation is much less appropriate to differentiate bacterial and fungal community structure. Specific lipid contents of microorganism secretion play a vital role in biofilm development.