Université de Fribourg

Conserved functions of ether lipids and sphingolipids in the early secretory pathway

Jiménez-Rojo, Noemi ; Leonetti, Manuel D. ; Zoni, Valeria ; Colom, Adai ; Feng, Suihan ; Iyengar, Namrata R. ; Matile, Stefan ; Roux, Aurélien ; Vanni, Stefano ; Weissman, Jonathan S. ; Riezman, Howard

In: Current Biology, 2020, vol. 30, no. 19, p. 3775-3787.e7

Sphingolipids play important roles in physiology and cell biology, but a systematic examination of their functions is lacking. We performed a genome-wide CRISPRi screen in sphingolipid-depleted human cells and identified hypersensitive mutants in genes of membrane trafficking and lipid biosynthesis, including ether lipid synthesis. Systematic lipidomic analysis showed a coordinate regulation...

Université de Fribourg

Structure and conserved function of iso-branched sphingoid bases from the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans

Hannich, J. Thomas ; Mellal, Denia ; Feng, Suihan ; Zumbuehl, Andreas ; Riezman, Howard

In: Chemical Science, 2017, vol. 8, no. 5, p. 3676–3686

Sphingolipids are bio-active metabolites that show structural diversity among eukaryotes. They are essential for growth of all eukaryotic cells but when produced in an uncontrolled manner can lead to cell death and pathologies including auto-immune reactions, cancer, diabetes and neurodegeneration. Caenorhabditis elegans is an important genetic model organism both to find new drug-targets...