Springer Post-Translational Modifications in Health and Disease: 13 (Protein Reviews, 13)

Post-translational modifications serve many different purposes in several cellular processes such as gene expression, protein folding and transport to appropriate cell compartment, protein-lipid and protein-protein interactions, enzyme regulation, signal transduction, cell proliferation and differentiation, protein stability, recycling and degradation. Although several-hundred different modifications are known, the significance of many of them remains unknown. The enormous versatility of the modifications which frequently alter the physico-chemical properties of the respective proteins represents an extraordinary challenge in understanding their physiological role. Since essential cellular functions are regulated by protein modifications, an improvement of current understanding of their meaning might allow new avenues to prevent and/or alleviate human and animal diseases. From the Back Cover Post-translational modifications serve many different purposes in a wide variety of cellular processes,such as protein synthesis, folding, stability, the housing of prosthetic groups, vesicular trafficking,protein targeting to particular cell stores, exocytosis and endocytosis, the biogenesis of cell organelles and basal lamina. Signal transduction, with functional effects for enzyme regulation and metabolic control on the one hand, and gene expression, cell division, differentiation and apoptosis on the other, is also prominent. Post-translational Modifications in Health and Disease provides the reader with nineteen reviews that stimulate further investigations in the proteomic field - focusing on functional and pathological aspects of protein prenylation, the incorporation of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) moieties, oxidation, nitrosylation, glycosylation, and phosphorylation and dephosphorylation - with emphasis on their outcome for protein-protein interaction phenomena and down-stream effects. Additional chapters are devoted to protein ubiquitination, sumoylation and endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation (ERAD), the influence of histone modification on gene expression and DNA repair, and proteolytic processing of intracellular and basal lamina proteins. This book will be of particular significance to researchers, clinicians, and students of biology, pharmacy and medicine.