Intracellular cholesterol trafficking.

The overall picture of intracellular cholesterol trafficking is very complex. The transfer of cholesterol within the cell depends on the contribution of several trafficking mechanisms. The known elements of cholesterol trafficking machinery include clathrin-coated pits, scavenger receptor type B1, caveolae, phospholipid rafts, Niemann-Pick C disease protein, sterol carrier protein 2, multidrug resistance protein, microsomal triglyceride transfer protein and steroidogenic acute regulation protein. Several pathways of intracellular cholesterol trafficking, for example retroendocytosis and cholesterol absorption in the intestine, are yet to be connected to specific structural elements. The contribution of different pathways depends on cell type, the source and destination of cholesterol and cellular cholesterol content and requirements. Some pathways are found in most, if not all, cell types, while others are associated with the specialized function of a particular cell type, for example, lipoprotein assembly in the liver or intestine and steroid hormone synthesis in steroidogenic tissue. Certain routes of intracellular cholesterol trafficking are heavily backed up by several auxiliary pathways, others entirely depend on a single functional element. In this review we describe the intracellular machinery involved in the intracellular transfer of cholesterol and give an overview of both the general and specialized pathways of intracellular cholesterol trafficking known to date.