Diosgenin, a phytosteroid spirostanol sapogenin, is the product of hydrolysis by acids, strong bases, or enzymes of saponins, extracted from the tubers of Dioscorea wild yam species, such as the Kokoro. It is also present in smaller amounts in a number of other species. The sugar-free (aglycone) product of such hydrolysis, diosgenin is used for the commercial synthesis of cortisone, pregnenolone, progesterone, and other steroid products.
Diosgenin, a phytosteroid spirostanol sapogenin, is the product of hydrolysis by acids, strong bases, or enzymes of saponins, extracted from the tubers of Dioscorea wild yam species, such as the Kokoro. It is also present in smaller amounts in a number of other species. The sugar-free (aglycone) product of such hydrolysis, diosgenin is used for the commercial synthesis of cortisone, pregnenolone, progesterone, and other steroid products.
==Sources== It is present in detectable amounts in Costus speciosus, Smilax menispermoidea, Helicteres isora, species of Paris, Aletris, Trigonella, and Trillium, and in extractable amounts from many species of Dioscorea – D. althaeoides, D. colletti, D. composita, D. floribunda, D. futschauensis, D. gracillima, D. hispida, D. hypoglauca, D. mexicana, D. nipponica, D. panthaica, D. parviflora, D. septemloba, and D. zingiberensis.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).