Cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions are of fundamental importance for the development and the maintenance of tissues and organs in multicellular organisms. Adhesive processes are mediated and controlled by an increasingly large and complex number of cell adhesion molecules that are anchored to the cell surface membrane by transmembrane domains. According to their structural and functional features, cell adhesion molecules have been classified into at least four major families: the integrins, selectins, cadherins and members of the immunoglobulin superfamily. Apart from linking cells to...

This volume reviews a series of different publications dealing with orotic acid. Orotic acid was isolated from cow's milk 75 years ago by Biscaro and Belloni in Italy. Fifty years later again Italian scientists described the growth-promoting activity of orotic acid in vitamin B -deficient animals. 12 Orotic acid is the precursor of pyrimidine nucleotides which are involved in many biochemical reactions: UTP and CTP, as substrates for RNA polymerase, and UDP sugars, as substrates for carbohydrate containing macromolecules, e.g. glycogen, glycoproteins and glycolipids. The biosynthesis of these...

Many thought that the 'German question', that had shaped European history so catastrophically in the last century, had been solved for good in 1990. The book addresses these issues by examining the policies and politics of the Red-Green government and by putting recent changes and developments in this country in a long-term perspective.