title: Labeled chemical biology tools for investigating sphingolipid metabolism, trafficking and interaction with lipids and proteins.
abstract: The unraveling of sphingolipid metabolism and function in the last 40 years relied on the extensive study of inherited human disease and specifically-tailored mouse models. However, only few of the achievements made so far would have been possible without chemical biology tools, such as fluorescent and/or radio-labeled and other artificial substrates, (mechanism-based) enzyme inhibitors, cross-linking probes or artificial membrane models. In this review we provide an overview over chemical biology tools that have been used to gain more insight into the molecular basis of sphingolipid-related biology. Many of these tools are still of high relevance for the investigation of current sphingolipid-related questions, others may stimulate the tailoring of novel probes suitable to address recent and future issues in the field. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Tools to study lipid functions.
authors.affiliation: LIMES, Membrane Biology & Lipid Biochemistry Unit, c/o Kekulé-Institut für Organische Chemie und Biochemie, Universität Bonn, Gerhard-Domagk-Str. 1, D-53121 Bonn, Germany. Electronic address: schwarzmann@uni-bonn.de.
authors.forename: Günter
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schwarzmann
authors.affiliation: Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Department of Chemistry, Brook Taylor Str. 2, D-12489 Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: christoph.arenz@chemie.hu-berlin.de.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Arenz
authors.affiliation: LIMES, Membrane Biology & Lipid Biochemistry Unit, c/o Kekulé-Institut für Organische Chemie und Biochemie, Universität Bonn, Gerhard-Domagk-Str. 1, D-53121 Bonn, Germany. Electronic address: sandhoff@uni-bonn.de.
authors.forename: Konrad
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sandhoff
mesh_terms: D001692:Biological Transport; D002240:Carbohydrate Sequence; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D006801:Humans; D015335:Molecular Probes; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011485:Protein Binding; D011506:Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D013107:Sphingolipids / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D015335:Molecular Probes; D011506:Proteins; D013107:Sphingolipids
keywords: Biotinylated ganglioside; Fluorescent sphingolipid; Photoactivatable ganglioside; Radiolabeled sphingolipid; Spin-labeled ganglioside