The cholesterol biosynthesis pathway.

<p>Moderate alcohol consumption decreased expression of 15 genes throughout the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway. Blue circles denote genes with a fold change greater than −1.3, while green denote those less than −1.3. All enzymes (orange arrowheads) produced from these genes catalyzed (green arrows labeled Z) their respective chemical reactions (grey boxes) on their target compounds (purple hexagons). The first compound, Acetyl-CoA, and the last compound, Cholesterol, are denoted by black circles (top and bottom of figure, respectively). The figure also displays the cellular localization of the enzymes: the entire figure is found in the cytoplasm, pink ovals represent peroxisomes (e.g. IDI1), blue ovals are lysosomes (e.g. LSS), and pink stacks represent endoplasmic reticulum (e.g. FDFT1). <i>Srebf1</i> and <i>Srebf2</i>, transcription factors that activate many of these genes, were both down-regulated (not displayed). Nine of these results were confirmed by qRT-PCR (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0110501#pone-0110501-g003" target="_blank">Fig. 3A</a>). Image modified from Thomson Reuter's MetaCore.