Publisher's copyright statement:Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractSphingolipids are important components of eukaryotic membranes, particularly the plasma membrane, and are involved in a diverse array of signal transduction processes.In the Eukaryota the biosynthetic pathway for the formation of these lipid species is largely conserved. However, in contrast to mammals which produce sphingomyelin (SM), several pathogenic fungi and protozoa synthesize inositol phosphorylceramide 3 Key wordsTrypanosoma, trypanosomiasis, sphingolipid synthase, drug target FootnoteSince the initial submission of this work to Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology a paper has been published in Molecular Microbiology identifying and characterising the same family of enzymes in Trypanosoma brucei: