Twenty years after the idea of this Carotenoids book series was first discussed, we are finally reaching the end of the project. Carotenoids Volumes 4 and 5 now move us into the great field of biology, and cover the functions of carotenoids and the actions of carotenoids in nutrition and health. In the classic 1971 Isler book Carotenoids, carotenoid functions were covered in just one chapter. Now, thanks to technical developments and multidisciplinary approaches that make it possible to study functional processes in great detail, this subject is the most rapidly expanding area of carotenoid...

George Britton, Synnl/Jve Liaaen-Jensen and Hanspeter Pfander This book, Volume 2 in the series Carotenoids, is the first book to be published that is devoted entirely to the total synthesis of carotenoids, but it is timely in view of the rapid development and the growing diversification of the carotenoid field. The 1971 Carotenoids book contained a major chapter of 250 pages on total synthesis by H. Mayer and O. Isler. That comprehensive and authoritative review described systematically the construction of many synthons and the synthesis of many natural and unnatural carotenoids and related...

With the number of natural carotenoid structures reported rising above 700, there is a clear need for a single reference work containing data on all these compounds. This Handbook includes all natural carotenoids and common isolation artefacts for which structures have been assigned up to the end of 2001. For each compound, it provides selected key references and critically assessed information about natural occurrence and isolation, and spectroscopic data for identification. A standard full-page entry is given for each compound that has been characterised unambiguously, showing

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