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Secondary metabolism: High cholesterol in tomato

Nature Plants volume 3, Article number: 16213 (2017) Cite this article

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A straightforward approach reveals the full cholesterol biosynthetic pathway in tomato, which is composed of ten enzymatic steps, opening the door for bioengineering of high-value molecules in crops. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that cholesterogenesis evolved from the more ancient phytosterol pathway.

There is some sort of public obsession with labelling cholesterol as dangerous for human health in Western countries, and with keeping nutritional intake of this molecule at an absolute minimum through a supposed cholesterol-free plant-based diet. But of course plants do contain cholesterol. Furthermore, if there was no uptake of cholesterol in food, it would simply be fabricated in the human liver, as demonstrated by a considerable number of Nobel-prize-winning studies over several decades. There could be no functional human brain cells without cholesterol. However, blood-cholesterol-lowering effects of phytosterols and some other metabolites have frequently been described1, and have fed a number of laboratories with research money.

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Figure 1: A simplified scheme of the sterol pathway in plants.

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  1. Thomas J. Bach is at the CNRS-IBMP, Université de Strasbourg, Institut de Botanique, F-67000 Strasbourg, France.,

    Thomas J. Bach

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Correspondence to Thomas J. Bach.

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Bach, T. Secondary metabolism: High cholesterol in tomato. Nature Plants 3, 16213 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.213

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.213

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