The DOI matches its Crossref record; 53 of the 53 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
What's so special about cholesterol?
Abstract
Cholesterol (or other higher sterols such as ergosterol and phytosterols) is universally present in large amounts (20–40 mol%) in eukaryotic plasma membranes, whereas it is universally absent in the membranes of prokaryotes. Cholesterol has a unique ability to increase lipid order in fluid membranes while maintaining fluidity and diffusion rates. Cholesterol imparts low permeability barriers to lipid membranes and provides for large mechanical coherence. A short topical review is given of these special properties of cholesterol in relation to the structure of membranes, with results drawn from a variety of theoretical and experimental studies. Particular focus is put on cholesterol's ability to promote a special membrane phase, the liquidordered phase, which is unique for cholesterol (and other higher sterols like ergosterol) and absent in membranes containing the cholesterol precursor lanosterol. Cholesterol's role in the formation of special membrane domains and so‐called rafts is discussed.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Functional rafts in cell membranes
Simons, K., & Ikonen, E. (1997) · Nature · doi:10.1038/42408 · Cited by 9,757
Evidence for the Formation of Symmetric and Asymmetric DLPC-DAPC Lipid Bilayer Domains
Ritter, M., Schmidt, S., Jakab, M., Paulmichl, M., & Henderson, R. (2013) · Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry · doi:10.1159/000350122 · Cited by 3,923
Srimaroeng, C., Cecile, J. P., Walden, R., & Pritchard, J. B. (2013) · Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry · doi:10.1159/000350077 · Cited by 2,989
Lipid Rafts Reconstituted in Model Membranes
Dietrich, C., Bagatolli, L. A., Volovyk, Z. N., Thompson, N. L., Levi, M., Jacobson, K., & Gratton, E. (2001) · Biophysical Journal · doi:10.1016/s0006-3495(01)76114-0 · Cited by 1,376
The State of Lipid Rafts: From Model Membranes to Cells
Edidin, M. (2003) · Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure · doi:10.1146/annurev.biophys.32.110601.142439 · Cited by 1,341
A Role for Lipid Shells in Targeting Proteins to Caveolae, Rafts, and Other Lipid Domains
Anderson, R. G. W., & Jacobson, K. (2002) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1068886 · Cited by 1,125
Vist, M. R., & Davis, J. H. (1990) · Biochemistry · doi:10.1021/bi00454a021 · Cited by 1,112
Phase equilibria in the phosphatidylcholine-cholesterol system
Hjort Ipsen, J., Karlström, G., Mourtisen, O. G., Wennerström, H., & Zuckermann, M. J. (1987) · Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Biomembranes · doi:10.1016/0005-2736(87)90020-4 · Cited by 1,059
Self-citationHandbook of Biological Physics
Robillard, G. T., de Boer, H. F., Haris, P. I., Meijberg, W., Dijkstra, D. S., Schuurman‐Wolters, G. K., Hoeve-Duurkens, R. T., Chapman, D., & Broos, J. (1996) · Cited by 927
Lipid–protein interactions in biological membranes: A structural perspective
Lee, A. G. (2003) · Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Biomembranes · doi:10.1016/s0005-2736(03)00056-7 · Cited by 886
Cited by
Lipid rafts as a membrane-organizing principle
Lingwood, D., & Simons, K. (2010) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1174621 · Cited by 4,417
Betulin Is a Potent Anti-Tumor Agent that Is Enhanced by Cholesterol
Mullauer, F. B., Kessler, J. H., & Medema, J. P. (2009) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005361 · Cited by 688
Order of lipid phases in model and plasma membranes
Kaiser, H.-J., Lingwood, D., Levental, I., Sampaio, J. L., Kalvodova, L., Rajendran, L., & Simons, K. (2009) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0908987106 · Cited by 482
Altered lipid content inhibits autophagic vesicular fusion
Koga, H., Kaushik, S., & Cuervo, A. M. (2010) · The FASEB Journal · doi:10.1096/fj.09-144519 · Cited by 395
Role of cholesterol in the function and organization of G-protein coupled receptors
Pucadyil, T. J., & Chattopadhyay, A. (2006) · Progress in Lipid Research · doi:10.1016/j.plipres.2006.02.002 · Cited by 296
Metadata
- Authors
- Mouritsen, O. G., & Zuckermann, M. J.
- Venue
- Lipids
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2004-11
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1101-1113
- ISSN
- 0024-4201 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-9307
- OpenAlex
- W2042284982
- Cited by
- 537
- References
- 53
- FWCI
- 3.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: What's so special about cholesterol? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1007/s11745-004-1336-x
- The paper
- Mouritsen, O. G., & Zuckermann, M. J. (2004). What's so special about cholesterol? Lipids. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11745-004-1336-x
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
