Digitonin-cholesterol complex formation: Effects of varying the length of the side-chain.

Abstract

A method was designed to study complex formation between saponin and cholesterol in aqueous ethanol, and was applied, with some modifications, to examine the ability of cholesterol analogues bearing various lengths of side-chain to form complexes (digitonides) with digitonin. The results indicated that all the analogues were capable of forming digitonides regardless of the length of the side-chain, but the effectiveness of digitonide formation increased as the length of the side-chain increased. A plausible structural model is proposed for the digitonide in order to interpret these results.