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

The model eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast) has provided significant 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 biosynthetic pathway, almost to completion, the remarkable conservation of other components of sterol homeostasis are described in this review.