Conservation of eukaryotic sterol homeostasis: new insights from studies in budding yeast

The model eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast) has provided s ignificant insight into sterol homeostasis. The study of sterol metabolism in a genetically amenable model organism such as yeast is likely to have an even greater impact and relevance to human disease with the advent of the complete human genome sequence. In addition to definition of the sterol bio synthetic pathway, almost to completion, the remarkable conservation of oth er components of sterol homeostasis are described in this review. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.