OBJECTIVE to evaluate retinol and β-carotene serum levels and their relationship with risk factors for cardiovascular disease in individuals with morbid obesity, resident in Rio de Janeiro. METHODOLOGY blood serum concentrations of retinol and β-carotene of 189 morbidly obese individuals were assessed. The metabolic syndrome was identified according to the criteria of the National Cholesterol...

Experimental approaches targeting carotenoid biosynthetic enzymes have successfully increased the seed β-carotene content of crops. However, linkage analysis of seed carotenoids in Arabidopsis thaliana recombinant inbred populations showed that only 21% of quantitative trait loci, including those for β-carotene, encode carotenoid biosynthetic enzymes in their intervals. Thus, numerous loci rema...

Vitamin A deficiency is a major public health problem in developing countries. Some studies also implicate a suboptimal vitamin A intake in certain parts of the population of the industrialized world. Provitamin A carotenoids such as β-carotene are the major source for retinoids (vitamin A and its derivatives) in the human diet. However, it is still controversial how much β-carotene intake is r...

Maize (Zea mays L.) is a staple food in many parts of Africa, but the endosperm generally contains low levels of the pro-vitamin A carotenoid β-carotene, leading to vitamin A deficiency disease in populations relying on cereal-based diets. However, maize endosperm does accumulate high levels of other carotenoids, including zeaxanthin, which is derived from β-carotene via two hydroxylation react...

Storage roots of cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz), a major subsistence crop of sub-Saharan Africa, are calorie rich but deficient in essential micronutrients, including provitamin A β-carotene. In this study, β-carotene concentrations in cassava storage roots were enhanced by co-expression of transgenes for deoxy-d-xylulose-5-phosphate synthase (DXS) and bacterial phytoene synthase (crtB), me...

Winter squash "type butternut" is harvested in physiological ripening for better commercial distribution, when sensory and/or nutritional quality is not optimum for consumption. The objective of this study was to quantify the content of α-carotene, β-carotene, color and dry matter in the pulp of raw and microwave-cooked winter squash "type butternut" (variety CosmoF1) in three states of commerc...

The Raman spectra of all-trans-lycopene in n-hexane were measured under high pressure, and the results compared with those of β-carotene. The different pressure effects on Raman spectra are analyzed taking into account the different structures of lycopene and β-carotene molecules. It is concluded that: (a) the vibronic coupling between the S₁ and S₀ states of β-carotene is stronger than that of...

Esophageal cancer is a common malignant tumor occurring in human esophageal epithelial tissue. The primary purpose of this paper was to define the effects of β-carotene and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, alone and in combination, on cell proliferation, cell cycle and apoptosis of human esophageal cancer EC9706 cells. Treatment with different concentrations of β-carotene and/or 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin ...

Giant unilamellar vesicles of soy phosphatidylcholine are found to undergo budding when sensitized with chlorophyll a ([phosphatidylcholine] : [chlorophyll a] = 1500 : 1) under light irradiation (400-440 nm, 16 mW mm(-2)). 'Entropy' as a dimensionless image heterogeneity measurement is found to increase linearly with time during an initial budding process. For β-carotene addition ([phosphatidyl...

Development of vitamin A-rich cereals can help in alleviating the widespread problem of vitamin A deficiency. We report here significant enhancement of kernel β-carotene in elite maize genotypes through accelerated marker-assisted backcross breeding. A favourable allele (543 bp) of the β-carotene hydroxylase (crtRB1) gene was introgressed in the seven elite inbred parents, which were low (1.4 µ...