CHAPTER 2
Sterols: Their Structure and Distribution
WERNER BERGMAN*^
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
I. Introduction
103
II. The Sterols
105
A. General Properties
105
B. Structures
109
C. Types of Natural Sterols
Ill
III. Sterols of Bacteria and Protozoa
120
IV. Sterols of Sponges
123
V. Sterols of Coelenterates
130
VI. Sterols of Ctenophores to Annelids
132
VII. Sterols of Arthropods
133
A. Sterols of Crustaceans and Myriapods
133
B. Sterols of Insects
134
VIII. Sterols of Mollusks
136
IX. Sterols of Echinoderms
144
X. Sterols of Chordates
152
XI. Conclusions
153
References
156
I. Introduction
The discovery of the organic nature of gallstones in the latter part
of the eighteenth century marks the beginning of the study of the
chemistry and biochemistry of the sterols. In 1816 Chevreul named the
principal component of such stones "cholesterine" to connote that it is
a fatty (-ine) solid (stereos) of bile (chole) (I). After Berthelot (2)
had shown in 1859 that this compound is an alcohol, its name was
changed to the more descriptive one of cholesterol in all but the
German literature. The term sterol was subsequently used to embrace
compounds closely related to cholesterol, and the term steroids encompasses the multitude of naturally occurring and synthetic compounds
which may be viewed as derived from sterols. Thus a host of compounds
of great physiological importance and of intriguing structural features
has been combined under an unimaginative name the English equivalent of which is solids.
f Deceased.
103