Cholesterol is an abundant and important lipid component of cellular membranes. Analysis
of cholesterol transport and diffusion in living cells is hampered by the technical challenge of
designing suitable cholesterol probes which can be detected for example by optical
microscopy. One strategy is to use intrinsically fluorescent sterols, as dehydroergosterol
(DHE), having minimal chemical alteration compared to cholesterol but giving low
fluorescence signals in the UV region of the spectrum. Alternatively, one can use dye-tagged …