The Art of the Soluble

摘要

Since the 1980s, inositol lipids have captured more attention than inositol phosphates as important cellular signaling molecules, even though it was an inositol phosphate—inositol 1,4,5-trisphos-phate (IP_3)—that was assigned a definitive cellular function first. Two papers recently published in Science and one that appears in this issue go a long way toward redressing this balance and establish a new relationship between the lipids and their soluble counterparts.