The recent identification of the aberrant transport proteins ABCG5 and ABCG8 resulting in sitosterolemia suggests that intestinal uptake of cholesterol is an unselective process, and that discrimination between cholesterol and plant sterols takes place at the level of sterol efflux from the enterocyte. Although plant sterols are structurally very similar to cholesterol, differing only in their ...

Fractionation of an antitrypanosomal lipophilic leaf extract from Strychnos spinosa led to the isolation of eight triterpenoids and sterols in this plant part for the first time. Two of these were found to possess in vitro antitrypanosomal activity, namely, saringosterol (14) and 24-hydroperoxy-24-vinylcholesterol (15), with IC(50) values of 7.8 +/- 1.2 and 3.2 +/- 1.2 microM, respectively. The...

Obtusifoliol-14a-demethylase (CYP51) is implicated in plant sterol biosynthesis. An Arabidopsis expressed sequence tag encoding a CYP51 was used as a probe to isolate Nicotiana tabacum L. cDNAs. Two types of cDNA clones were identi®ed. Nt CYP51-1 and Nt CYP51-2 shared 97% identity together and around 75% with other plant CYP51s. The function of the encoded enzyme has been demonstrated in planta...

Current knowledge of steroid nutrition, metabolism, and function in free-living, plant-parasitic and animal-parasitic nematodes is reviewed, with emphasis upon recent investigation of Caenorhabditis elegans. A number of 4-desmethylsterols with a trans-A/B ring configuration can satisfy the steroid nutritional requirement in C. elegans, but sterols with a cis-A/B ring configuration or trans-A/B ...

The interest in plant sterols enriched foods has recently enhanced due to their healthy properties. The influence of the unsaturation degree of different fatty acids methyl esters (FAME: stearate, oleate, linoletate and linolenate) on a mixture of three plant sterols (PS: campesterol, stigmasterol and β-sitosterol) was evaluated at 180 °C for up to 180 min. Sterols degraded slower in the presen...