Abstract
In most higher plants, sterols are present as a mixture of Δ5-sterols with sitosterol, stigmasterol and 24-methylcholesterol as the main compounds. Plant sterols differ from cholesterol by the presence of an additional bulky alkyl group at C-24 of the side-chain. The high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids in plant membranes, which results in a lower packing of phospholipids (PL) acyl chains compared to that of acyl chains in animal membranes, is probably an important feature for a good fit between plant PL and plant sterols. In order to investigate whether plant sterols may regulate the plasma membrane fluidity of higher plant cells as well as cholesterol does in animal cells, steady-state fluorescence polarization measurements using 1,6-diphenyl-l,3,5-hexatriene as a probe were performed with larqe unilamellar vesicles (LUV) prepared from soybean phosphatidylcholine (PC) and different plant sterols in varyina molar ratios. The effectiveness of 24-methylpollinastanol (a 9β,19-cyclopropyisterol) was also tested.
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