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The fact that cholesta-3:5-dien-7-one occurs in arteriosclerotic aorta and some other tissues, in small amounts (Hardegger, Ruzicka & Tagmann, 1943; Prelog, Ruzicka & Stein, 1943), and that it is not necessarily an artifact (Kantiengar & Morton, 1955a) makes it desirable to study the effect of administering it to animals. In the present work it has been given to rats orally at the rate of 25 mg./ rat. Absorption is slow and partial, but a little unchanged material reaches the liver; conversion into a similar compound (probably cholesta-4:6dien-3-one) occurs in the gut to an appreciable extent, but absorption of this substance is very poor. It has been shown (Kantiengar & Morton,1955b) that by feeding cholesterol (2 % ofdiet) the resulting fatty livers contain small, but significant, amounts of the 3:5-dien-7-one. One result of the present study is the finding that on an otherwise sterol-free diet providing 83.3 mg. dienone/rat/day, the part which reaches the liver is stored to only a minute extent and, although the digitonin-precipitable sterol becomes higher than in the sterol-free controls, it is quite comparable with that of normal rat liver. This may mean that the appearance of cholesta-3:5-dien-7-one in tissues is a result of excess cholesterol production or deposition. EXPERIMENTAL AnimaZs. Healthy adult male albino rats were used. They were given 12 g. rat cubes on each of 4 days before dosing.

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