Sphingolipids play important roles in cell regulation and signal transduction. Recently, a sphinogomyelin cycle has been described in which activation of neutral sphingomyelinase leads to the breakdown of sphingomyelin and the generation of ceramide. Ceramide, in turn, has emerged as a candidate intracellular mediator for the action of certain cell agonists and has multiple biologic actions. Ceramide is a potent suppressor of cell growth and an inducer of apoptosis. The present studies show that exposure of IM-9 cells to ceramide resulted in internucleosomal cleavage of DNA, yielding laddered patterns of oligonucleosomal fragments characteristic of apoptosis. DNA fragmentation induced by ceramide was also confirmed by diphenylamine assay. The effect of ceramide on cell cycle progression was also studied. The addition of ceramide increase G$_{1}$ phase distribution in cell cycle. Cell cycle-related cyclin D$_{1}$ gene expression was decreased in a time-dependent manner. These results suggest that apoptosis induced by ceramide is related to cell cycle associated with the alteration of cell cycle in IM-9 cells.