Endocytic trafficking of sphingomyelin depends on its acyl chain length

To study the principles of endocytic lipid trafficking, we introduced pyrene sphingomyelins (PyrSMs) with varying acyl chain lengths and domain partitioning properties into human fibroblasts or HeLa cells. We found that a long-chain, ordered-domain preferring PyrSM was targeted Hrs and Tsg101 dependently to late endosomal compartments and recycled to the plasma membrane in an NPC1- and cholesterol-dependent manner. A short-chain, disordered domain preferring PyrSM recycled more effectively, by using Hrs-, Tsg101- and NPC1-independent routing that was insensitive to cholesterol loading. Similar chain length-dependent recycling was observed for unlabeled sphingomyelins (SMs). The findings 1) establish acyl chain length as an important determinant in the endocytic trafficking of SMs, 2) implicate ESCRT complex proteins and NPC1 in the endocytic recycling of ordered domain lipids to the plasma membrane, and 3) introduce long-chain PyrSM as the first fluorescent lipid tracing this pathway.