Vacuolar membrane protein involved with Npc2p in sterol trafficking; transits through the biosynthetic vacuolar protein sorting pathway, involved in sphingolipid metabolism; cells lacking Ncr1p exhibit high levels of long chain bases (LCB), similar to the accumulation of high amounts of lipids observed in patients with Neimann-Pick C, a disease caused by loss-of-function mutations in NPC1, the functional ortholog of Ncr1p
