Recent advances in molecular and cellular biology, analytical chemistry, and nanotechnology have dramatically improved the understanding of vitamin biomechanics and the requirements for human function. Vitamin dependant signaling cascades, alterations in gene expression due to variations in vitamin supply, and DNA stability and packaging are just a few of the new roles for vitamins that these sciences reveal. Maintaining its status as the highest quality reference in the field, the Handbook of Vitamins brings together leading experts in molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology to incorporate these new discoveries into this updated and revised fourth edition.True to the clinical focus of the previous editions, this book is comprised of comprehensive summaries that analyze the chemical, physiological, and nutritional relationships and highlight the newly described and identified functions for all recognized vitamins. Each chapter covers the physiology, biochemistry, genomics, and molecular biology of its respective vitamin with specific information on coenzyme function, cell signaling, vitamin status, and antioxidant and anti-inflammatory defense. New chapters discuss the recent use of DNA microarrays in the identification of thousands of vitamin-dependant genes and the modifications that can be important to epigenetic events and genomic stability. Coverage of advances in vitamin analysis and assessment discuss new applications of accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) that can study vitamin metabolism and turnover at physiological concentrations. The book also includes an updated dietary reference intake for vitamins with examples of vitamin-related polymorphisms and genetic factors that influence the relative need for given vitamins.Encompassing and incorporating newly identified roles of vitamins in cellular and organism regulation, the Handbook of Vitamins, Fourth Edition continues to offer the most respected, up-to-date research with ready clinical application that we have come to expect.