Sterol molecule: structure, biosynthesis, and function

Abstract

This review briefly summarizes key researches on the structure of the sterol molecule from its very beginnings to the definitive elucidation in 1932. Cholesterol biosynthesis treated in somewhat greater detail covers the period from the 1930s to the 1960s. As a historic contribution, it presents researches previously published in numerous books, reviews, and original papers. The selection of topics, dictated by limits of time and space, is necessarily arbitrary and a personal choice. Readers of this journal will be familiar with the relevant chemical structures. Structural formulas are therefore omitted.