Azide-tagged sphingolipids for the proteome-wide identification of C16-ceramide-binding proteins.

Ceramide plays key roles in autophagy, inflammation and apoptosis. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms regulating its function and only a handful of cellular effectors are known for this lipid. Here we show that azide-tagged sphingolipids are powerful tools to identify ceramide targets. The combination of a protein array analysis and a mass spectrometry-based proteomic profiling successfully detects known ceramide-binding proteins and identifies others not yet reported, several of which we validated using a variety of techniques.