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Cited by 377

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Cellular Cholesterol Directly Activates Smoothened in Hedgehog Signaling

Open access
Huang, Pengxiang, Nedelcu, Daniel, Watanabe, Miyako, Jao, Cindy, Kim, Youngchang, Liu, Jing, Salic, Adrian·2016·Cell

Abstract

Summary In vertebrates, sterols are necessary for Hedgehog signaling, a pathway critical in embryogenesis and cancer. Sterols activate the membrane protein Smoothened by binding its extracellular, cysteine-rich domain (CRD). Major unanswered questions concern the nature of the endogenous, activating sterol and the mechanism by which it regulates Smoothened. We report crystal structures of CRD complexed with sterols and alone, revealing that sterols induce a dramatic conformational change of the binding site, which is sufficient for Smoothened activation and unique among CRD-containing receptors. We demonstrate Hedgehog signaling requires sterol binding to Smoothened and define key residues for sterol recognition and activity. We also show that cholesterol itself binds and activates Smoothened. Furthermore, the effect of oxysterols is abolished in Smoothened mutants that retain activation by cholesterol and Hedgehog. We propose that the endogenous Smoothened activator is cholesterol, not oxysterols, and that vertebrate Hedgehog signaling controls Smoothened by regulating its access to cholesterol.

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Metadata

Authors
Huang, P., Nedelcu, D., Watanabe, M., Jao, C., Kim, Y., Liu, J., & Salic, A.
Venue
Cell
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2016-08
Volume
166
Issue
5
Pages
1176-1187.e14
ISSN
0092-8674 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2509291718
Cited by
377
References
6
FWCI
18.96
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Cellular Cholesterol Directly Activates Smoothened in Hedgehog Signaling. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.cell.2016.08.003
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Huang, P., Nedelcu, D., Watanabe, M., Jao, C., Kim, Y., Liu, J., & Salic, A. (2016). Cellular Cholesterol Directly Activates Smoothened in Hedgehog Signaling. Cell. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.08.003

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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