One-Eyed Animals Implicate Cholesterol in Development

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Molecular biologists have worked out how certain toxins disrupt embryonic development in animals, leading to defects that include cyclopia--a single large eye, other deformities, and brain abnormalities. As one group reports on page 1603, the toxins make cells unable to respond to a critical developmental signal, perhaps because they interfere with the normal traffic of cholesterol within cells. The finding provides some of the first clear evidence that cholesterol, long known as a structural component of cell membranes and as the raw material that the body converts into steroid hormones and bile acids, can also influence the signaling paths that guide development.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: