This volume provides state-of-the-art techniques for studying various aspects of cholesterol homeostasis, including its uptake, synthesis and efflux from the cell, as well as its trafficking within the cell. Chapters also cover techniques for studying the regulation of cholesterol homeostasis at both the transcriptional and post-translational levels, as well as studying the membrane topology and structure of cholesterol-related proteins. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and practical, Cholesterol Homeostasis: Methods and Protocols aims to provide key techniques in tackling the investigation of cholesterol homeostasis.

This book provides a comprehensive description of sterols and their novel biological roles in mammalian signaling, the book covers their biosynthesis and structure, describes sterol receptor -mediated actions, their tissue distribution and their role in disease. It offers insight into new research findings, focusing specifically on novel discoveries in bile acid and oxysterol signaling, including the lanosterol-to-cholesterol intermediates. Special attention is paid on the sex distribution of these sterols (male or female) and their sexually dimorphic roles in mammalian species, such as human, rat and mouse. Since sterols and drugs (xenobiotics) use many identical receptor-mediated signaling pathways, the book will be interesting for researchers working on the cross-road of endogenous and xenobiotic metabolism, it is intended for advanced students and scientists in molecular biology and biochemistry as well as for medical doctors in hepatology.

""What is this cholesterol?"" In this book entitled ""Cholesterol- Good, Bad, and the Heart"" now you got the answers given by the experts in the field. Moreover, you can explore more by reading the references/citations given in the articles of each chapter. It is still an emerging field and lot more is being discovered. You will be amazed how much knowledge is already there in this book on cholesterol. You will realize that cholesterol is an essential and extremely important building block of cell membranes and thus serves vital functions in the body. I believe this book will be incredibly powerful and useful in teaching to give new perspectives on cholesterol.

The book presents a qualitative and quantitative approach to understanding, managing, and enforcing the integration of homeostasis in the human body. Homeostasis in the human body is very crucial, as it provides the basics of the normal functioning of the human body. Utilizing a sound theoretical and practical foundation and illustrating procedural techniques through scientific examples, this book bridges the gap between the need for understanding, utilizing, and going for detailed research in this aspect. Detailed procedures have been omitted because of the variety of equipment and commercial kits used in today’s clinical laboratories.

Knowledge of cholesterol and its interaction with protein molecules is of fundamental importance in both animal and human biology. This book contains 22 chapters, dealing in depth with structural and functional aspects of the currently known and extremely diverse unrelated families of cholesterol-binding and cholesterol transport proteins. By drawing together this range of topics the Editor has attempted to correlate this broad field of study for the first time. Technical aspects are given considerable emphasis, particularly in relation cholesterol reporter molecules and to the isolation and study of membrane cholesterol- and sphingomyelin-rich "raft" domains. Cell biological, biochemical and clinical topics are included in this book, which serve to emphasize the acknowledged and important benefits to be gained from the study of cholesterol and cholesterol-binding proteins within the biomedical sciences and the involvement of cholesterol in several clinical disorders. It is hoped that by presenting this topic in this integrated manner that an appreciation of the fact that there is much more that needs to be taken into account, studied and understood than the widely discussed "bad and good cholesterol" associated, respectively, with the low- and high-density lipoproteins, LDL and HDL.

INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE FOR INTRACELLULAR CHOLESTEROL TRAFFICKING This volume is an elaboration of an earlier small meeting held in St. Louis, Missouri. In April 1997, many of the authors met for a two-day meeting devoted entirely to intracellular cholesterol trafficking. The rationale for this meeting was that investigators interested in this topic worked in a variety of fields, and rarely, if ever, all met together. Everybody knew each other's papers but mostly worked in isolation from one another. Understanding of cholesterol trafficking also appeared to have reached the point where it would start to rapidly expand beyond these few laboratories. Understanding of cholesterol trafficking was moving from a largely descriptive science into the molecular age. It seemed a good time to get together and see how much we agreed upon up to this point. More authors contributed to this volume than attended the St. Louis meeting. That meeting was generously funded by grants from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck and Company and Parke-Davis, however, the total funding available limited the size of the meeting. For the book, we are not so limited and have tried to be as inclusive as possible and pretty much invited everyone who is presently active in this area. We were quite fortunate to successfully recruit the authors we sought for each of these chapters. The authors and their contributions can be organized by particular interests and particular areas of expertise.

This state-of-the-art review provides an in-depth and critical summary of homocysteine from its molecular basis to clinical relevance and current clinical trials of folic acid and vitamin B6. Written by leading workers in the field, the book provides an authoritative, comprehensive and thoroughly up-to-date overview for scientists and clinicians and any others engaged in the field. It will also be useful to anyone involved in managing vascular patients or cardiac risk factors, as well as biochemists, pharmacologists, general physicians, cardiologists and clinical and basic researchers with an interest in preventive medicine.