Biology of Inositols and Phosphoinositides

From being to becoming important, myo-inositol and its derivatives including phosphoinositides and phosphoinositols involved in diversi?ed functions in wide varieties of cells overcoming its insigni?cant role had to wait more than a century. Myo-inositol, infact, is the oldest known inositol and it was isolated from muscle as early as 1850 and phytin (Inositol hexakis phosphate) from plants by Pfeffer in 1872. Since then, interest in inositols and their derivatives varied as the methodology of isolation and puri?cation of the stereoisomers of inositol and their derivatives advanced. Phosphoinositides were ?rst isolated from brain in 1949 by Folch and their structure was established in 1961 by Ballou and his coworkers. After the compilation of scattered publications on cyclitols by Posternak (1965), proceedings of the conference on cyclitols and phosphoinositides under the supervision of Hoffmann-Ostenhof, were p- lished in 1969. Similar proceedings of the second conference on the same s- ject edited by Wells and Eisenberg Jr was published in 1978. In that meeting at the concluding session Hawthorne remarked "persued deeply enough p- haps even myoinositol could be mirror to the whole universe". This is now infact the scenario on the research on inositol and their phosphoderivatives. Finally a comprehensive information covering the aspects of chemistry, b- chemistry and physiology of inositols and their phosphoderivatives in a book entitled Inositol Phosphates written by Cosgrove (1980) was available.

Inhalt
Structure and Nomenclature of Inositol Phosphates, Phosphoinositides, and Glycosylphosphatidylinositols.- Inositol and Plant Cell Wall Polysaccharide Biogenesis.- Functional Genomics of Inositol Metabolism.- Genetics of Inositol Polyphosphates.- Inositol in Bacteria and Archaea.- Regulation of 1D-myo-Inositol-3-Phosphate Synthase in Yeast.- The Structure and Mechanism of myo-Inositol-1-Phosphate Synthase.- Phosphoinositide Metabolism: Towards an Understanding of Subcellular Signaling.- Cracking the Green Paradigm: Functional Coding of Phosphoinositide Signals in Plant Stress Responses.- Inositols and Their Metabolites in Abiotic and Biotic Stress Responses.- Inositol Phosphates and Phosphoinositides in Health and Disease.- Mammalian Inositol 3-phosphate Synthase: Its Role in the Biosynthesis of Brain Inositol and its Clinical Use as a Psychoactive Agent.- Evolutionary Divergence of L-myo-Inositol 1-Phosphate Synthase: Significance of a Core Catalytic Structure.