Plastoglobules, lipid-protein bodies in the stroma of plant chloroplasts, are enriched in non-polar lipids, in particular prenyl quinols. In the present study we show that, in addition to the thylakoids, plastoglobules also contain a considerable proportion of the plastidial PQ-9 (plastoquinol-9), the redox component of photosystem II, and of the cyclized product of PQ-9, PC-8 (plastochromanol-...

Tocopherols are lipophilic antioxidants synthesized exclusively by photosynthetic organisms and collectively constitute vitamin E, an essential nutrient for both humans and animals. Tocopherol cyclase (TC) catalyzes the conversion of various phytyl quinol pathway intermediates to their corresponding tocopherols through the formation of the chromanol ring. Herein, the molecular and biochemical c...

Since natural antioxidants present increasing interest for food industry due to their beneficial effect on health, new potential sources have been screened among edible aromatic plants and a microalgae, Spirulina platensis. The determination was performed after optimising a previously validated method, because important differences have been found among values described in literature for tocoph...

Dietary vitamin E supplementation plays a key role in animal reproduction by protecting germ cells from oxidative damage. Recently, alpha-tocopherol homologues (namely, beta-, gamma- and delta-tocopherol) have been the object of increasing research because of their peculiar nonantioxidant properties. We found that these tocol-derived compounds are not homogeneously distributed among semen compo...

Grape seeds (GS) and grape skins (GK) are natural sources of polyphenols with featured antioxidant capacity. An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect these polyphenol in diets formulated contain same total extractable content on growth performance, protein digestibility, plasma meat ?- ?-tocopherol thigh oxidation broiler chickens. Five experimental were formulated: control, contro...

BACKGROUND Apolipoprotein (apo) E is a major determinant of plasma lipid concentrations, which in turn influence the plasma concentrations of various fat-soluble vitamins. OBJECTIVE We aimed to analyze the effect of APOE genotype on fat-soluble antioxidant concentrations in children. DESIGN A total of 926 healthy boys and girls aged 6-8 y were selected from 4 cities in Spain. APOE genotypin...

The elevated level of circulating estradiol increases the risk of breast tumor development. To gain further insight into mechanisms involved in their actions, we investigated the molecular mechanisms of 4-hydroxyestradiol (4-OHE(2)) to initiate and/or promote abnormal cell growth, and of alpha- or gamma-tocopherol to inhibit this process. MCF-10A, human breast epithelial cells were incubated wi...

Paired blood (collected after an overnight fast) and cervical tissue (cancerous, precancerous, and noncancerous) samples were obtained from 87 patients (age, 21-86 years) who had a hysterectomy or biopsy due to cervical cancer, precancer (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia I, II, and III), or noncancerous diseases. The samples were analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography for 10 mi...

In vivo studies show that alpha-tocotrienol and gamma-tocotrienol accumulate in adipose tissue. Furthermore, a recent study reports that the oral administration of gamma-tocotrienol from a tocotrienol-rich fraction from palm oil (TRF) decreases body fat levels in rats. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of TRF and its components on adipocyte differentiation in 3T3-L1 preadip...