The yeast sphingolipid signaling landscape

• The S. cerevisiae model and how changes in sphingolipid metabolism affect other critical signaling pathways.
• A complete view of the yeast lipidome requires integration of data produced by several research groups.
• A model sphingolipidome was assembled here by integrating several datasets focused on different lipid subgroups.
• It is difficult to pinpoint effects of individual lipid metabolites through observation of individual gene deletion phenotypes.
• A nearly comprehensive survey of single gene deletion phenotypes of the sphingolipid metabolic pathway is analyzed here.

Sphingolipids are recognized as signaling mediators in a growing number of pathways, and represent potential targets to address many diseases. The study of sphingolipid signaling in yeast has created a number of breakthroughs in the field, and has the potential to lead future advances. The aim of this article is to provide an inclusive view of two major frontiers in yeast sphingolipid signaling. In the first section, several key studies in the field of sphingolipidomics are consolidated to create a yeast sphingolipidome that ranks nearly all known sphingolipid species by their level in a resting yeast cell. The second section presents an overview of most known phenotypes identified for sphingolipid gene mutants, presented with the intention of illuminating not yet discovered connections outside and inside of the field.