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.

Chapter 1, Isoprenoid Modifications
Uyen T.T. Nguyen, Andrew Goodall, Kirill Alexandrov, and Daniel Abankwa
Chapter 2, GPI-Anchored Proteins in Health and Disease
David R. Taylor and Nigel Hooper
Chapter 3, Protein Oxidation
C. Quiney, S. Finnegan, G. Groeger, and Tom G. Cotter
Chapter 4, Involvement of S-Nitrosylation in Neurodegeneration
Yihang Li and Kenny K. K. Chung
Chapter 5, Protein Glycosylation, and Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation
Eva Morava, Dirk J. Lefeber, and Ron A. Wevers
Chapter 6, Defective Glycosylation of Dystroglycan in Muscular Dystrophy and Cancer
Federica Montanaro and Paul T. Martin
Chapter 7, Protein kinase A: The Enzyme and Cyclic AMP Signaling
Maria Nesterova and Constantine A. Stratakis
Chapter 8, The Protein Kinase C Family: Key Regulators Bridging Signaling Pathways in Skin and Tumor Epithelia
Dirk Breitkreutz, Liora Braiman-Wiksman, Nicole Daum, and Tamar Tennebaum
Chapter 9, Maintaining Energy Balance in Health and Disease: Role of AMP-activated Protein Kinase
John W. Scott
Chapter 10, Protein Phosphatases in the Brain: Regulation, Function and Disease
Ry Y. Tweedie-Cullen, C. Sehwan Park, and Isabelle M. Mansuy
Chapter 11, Covalent Protein Modification as a Mechanism for Dynamic Recruitment of Specific Interactors
Nicholas R. Bertos, Veena Sangwan, Xiang-Jiao Yang, Morag Park
Chapter 12, Regulation of Gene Expression by the Ubiquitin-Proteasome System and Implications for Neurological Disease
Lisa Lukaesko and Robert Meller
Chapter 13, Small Ubiquitin-like Modifiers and other Ubiquitin-like Proteins
Martijn van Hagen and Alfred Vertegaal
Chapter 14, ER-associated Degradation and its Involvement in Human Disease: Insights from Yeast
Nathalie Campagnolo and Michel Ghislain
Chapter 15, Regulation of Chromatin Structure and Transcription via Histone Modifications
Kajan Ratnakumar, Avnish Kapoor, and Emily Bernstein
Chapter 16, Chromatin: the Entry to and Exit from DNA Repair
Anastas Gospodinov and Zdenko Herceg
Chapter 17, Poly(ADP-rybosyl)ation of Chromosomal Proteins: Epigenetic Regulation and Human Genomic Integrity in Health and Disease
Rafael Alvarez-Gonzalez
Chapter 18, Post-translational Proteolytic Processing on Intracellular Proteins by Cathepsins and Cystatins
Nobuhiko Katunuma, Masae Takahashi, and Tadashi Tezuka
Chapter 19, Metalloproteases and Proteolytic Processing
Anthony J. Turner and Natalia N. Nalivaeva