Steroids

Patent Pending Steroids comprise a group of cyclical organic compounds whose basis is a characteristic arrangement of seventeen carbon atoms in a four-ring structure linked together from three 6-carbon rings followed by a 5-carbon ring and an eight-carbon side chain on carbon 17 (illustration on right). These rings are synthesized by biochemical processes from cyclization of a thirty-carbon chain, squalene, into lanosterol or cycloartenol. Hundreds of distinct steroids are found in animals, fungi, plants, and elsewhere and many steroids are necessary to life at all levels.