Environmental Biology Department, Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, CSIC, C/ Ramiro de Maeztu, 9, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
Microb Biotechnol. 2012 Nov;5(6):679-99. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-7915.2012.00331.x. Epub 2012 Feb 7.
Cholesterol is a steroid commonly found in nature with a great relevance in biology, medicine and chemistry, playing an essential role as a structural component of animal cell membranes. The ubiquity of cholesterol in the environment has made it a reference biomarker for environmental pollution analysis and a common carbon source for different microorganisms, some of them being important pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This work revises the accumulated biochemical and genetic knowledge on the bacterial pathways that degrade or transform this molecule, given that the characterization of cholesterol metabolism would contribute not only to understand its role in tuberculosis but also to develop new biotechnological processes that use this and other related molecules as starting or target materials.
胆固醇是一种在自然界中广泛存在的甾体化合物，在生物学、医学和化学领域具有重要意义，是动物细胞膜的结构组成部分。胆固醇在环境中的普遍性使其成为环境污染分析的参考生物标志物和不同微生物的常见碳源，其中一些是重要的病原体，如结核分枝杆菌。这项工作回顾了细菌降解或转化胆固醇的生化和遗传知识，因为胆固醇代谢的特征不仅有助于理解其在结核病中的作用，还有助于开发新的生物技术过程，将胆固醇和其他相关分子作为起始或目标材料。
