Sterolomics in biology, biochemistry, medicine

In mammalian systems sterolomics can be regarded as the quantitative or semi-quantitative profiling of all metabolites derived from cholesterol and its cyclic precursors. The system can be further complicated by metabolites derived from ingested phytosterols or pharmaceuticals, but this is beyond the scope of this article. Sterolomics can be performed on either an unbiased global format, or more usually, exploiting a targeted format. Here we discuss the different mass spectrometry-based analytical techniques used in sterolomics giving specific examples in the context of neurodegenerative disease and for the diagnosis of inborn errors of metabolism. We pay particular attention to the profiling of cholesterol metabolites in the bile acid biosynthesis pathways, although the analytical techniques discussed are also appropriate for analysis of hormonal steroids. (c) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).