Figure 1.

De-novo sphingolipid synthesis pathway. De-novo ceramide synthesis involves several steps. Serine Palmitoyltransferase (SPT) catalyzes the initial conjugation of palmitoyl-CoA with L-serine to form 3-keto-sphinganine which is subsequently reduced to sphinganine (SA). SA is acetylated by ceramide synthase (CerS) and desaturated by ceramide desaturase (DES) to form ceramide. The degradation pathway starts with the deacetylation of ceramide by ceramidase. The sphingosine (SO) formed is then phosphorylated by SO-Kinase and finally degraded to hexadecenal and phosphoethanolamine by the action of the sphingosine-1-phospate lyase (SO1P-lyase).