A combination of clickable, photoreactive sterol probes and mass spectrometry yields a chemoproteomic strategy for profiling protein-cholesterol interaction in living cells. Cholesterol is an essential structural component of cellular membranes and serves as a precursor for several classes of signaling molecules. Cholesterol exerts its effects and is, itself, regulated in large part by engagement in specific interactions with proteins. The full complement of sterol-binding proteins that exist in mammalian cells, however, remains unknown. Here we describe a chemoproteomic strategy that uses clickable, photoreactive sterol probes in combination with quantitative mass spectrometry to globally map cholesterol-protein interactions directly in living cells. We identified over 250 cholesterol-binding proteins, including receptors, channels and enzymes involved in many established and previously unreported interactions. Prominent among the newly identified interacting proteins were enzymes that regulate sugars, glycerolipids and cholesterol itself as well as proteins involved in vesicular transport and protein glycosylation and degradation, pointing to key nodes in biochemical pathways that may couple sterol concentrations to the control of other metabolites and protein localization and modification.

A clue to a drug's neurotoxicity?: The drug BIA 10-2474 inhibits fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), a lipase that degrades a specific endocannabinoid. On the basis of this activity, BIA 10-2474 was being developed as a potential treatment for anxiety and pain. In a phase 1 trial of the drug, one subject died, and four others suffered brain damage. As an initial step in investigating whether inhibition of off-target proteins by BIA 10-2474 might contribute to its clinical neurotoxicity, van Esbroeck et al. used activity-based proteomic assays to identify proteins targeted by the drug. Studying human cells and brain samples from subjects not associated with the trial, they found that BIA 10-2474 targeted several different lipases in addition to FAAH. It also substantially altered lipid metabolism in cultured neurons. Science , this issue p. 1084