The cholesterol-raising factor from coffee beans, cafestol, as an agonist ligand for the farnesoid and pregnane X receptors.

Cafestol, a diterpene present in unfiltered coffee brews such as Scandinavian boiled, Turkish, and cafetière coffee, is the most potent cholesterol-elevating compound known in the human diet. Several genes involved in cholesterol homeostasis have previously been shown to be targets of cafestol, including cholesterol 7alpha-hydroxylase (CYP7A1), the rate-limiting enzyme in bile acid biosynthesis. We have examined the mechanism by which cafestol elevates serum lipid levels.

Genomic analysis of the response of mouse models to high-fat feeding shows a major role of nuclear receptors in the simultaneous regulation of lipid and inflammatory genes.

The mechanisms of diet induced hyperlipidemia and atherosclerosis have been widely studied by delineating the role of candidate genes in transgenic and gene targeted mouse models. However, diet induced hyperlipidemia represents a complex process determined by many lipid genes that is only partly understood. This study is aimed at delineating the events induced by dietary intervention in different mouse models at the level of gene expression using microarray analysis.

GeneHopper: a web-based search engine to link gene-expression platforms through GenBank accession numbers.

Global gene-expression analysis is carried out using different technologies that are either array- or sequence-tag-based. To compare experiments that are performed on these different platforms, array probes and sequence tags need to be linked. An additional challenge is cross-referencing between species, to compare human profiles with those obtained in a mouse model, for example.