The amount of recent information collected about the molecular composition, structure, and function of the plasma lipoproteins, in man as well as in experimental animals, is very large. In this volume an assessment of our knowledge as it stands today has been organized within a framework of four general topics, the first about analytical data, the second about structure, the third about metab- olism, and the last about molecular variation and pathology. Thus the analytical, theoretical, experimental, and applied aspects of the topic have been treated in conjunction with each other. The analytical data in human and nonhuman primates were obtained after ultracentrifugal or electrophoretic separation of the protein class from the native serum. Comparisons of various methods were not forgotten. The main categories of lipoproteins, namely High Density (HDL), Low Density (LDL), and Very Low Density (VLDL), are treated separately, and lipid moiety and the polypeptide moiety are carefully described.
In the theoretical field of reassembly of lipoprotein particles by relipidizing delipidated polypeptides, the structural aspects of lipoprotein and the stabilizing effect of phospholipids on the poly- peptide structure were studied. The opposite direction of the pro- cess, namely degradation of a lipoprotein by means of lipolytic enzymes, has also been investigated and described.