Fungal cell wall : structure synthesis and assembly Preface Twenty years ago I wrote the first edition of this book on the fungal cell wall structure and synthesis a topic in which I have been interested for many years. As occurs in Twenty Years After second in the saga of The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas many changes have occurred during this 20 year time period beginning with those occurring in my own person. The field of cell wall research is no exception and the main topics of investigation have oscillated from those mainly centered on the determination of the chemical composition of the wall and the biochemical and physiological aspects of cell wall growth and expansion to a field dominated in great part by molecular biology and its ramifications. This change is obvious since it is the wave in biology in general. It is positive because it has brought light to many aspects of the behavior of the cell wall the synthesis of its main components and the enzymes involved and their regulation. However it is negative because many important aspects have been left out because they are not fashionable. With this background I have dared to take the responsibility of writing this second edition maybe without taking into consideration that I am probably old fashioned and perhaps without the necessary background to tackle the new ideas on the subject. But with the courage to engage in an attractive enterprise and my long interest on the fungal cell wall I expect to cover these deficiencies. Only the readers will judge if I have succeeded or not Jose Ruiz Herreras classic monograph Fungal Cell Wall: Structure Synthesis and Assembly guided a generation of researchers in both basic and applied science who worked with fungal systems. This revision is the first up to date review of the fungal cell wall since the original publication in 1992. The importance of the cell wall in the growth morphogenesis and evolution of the Kingdom Fungi has been magnified due to the important experimental evidence accumulated since 1992. Applicable to students professors and researchers this book gathers and discusses in detail all this information which has not been critically reviewed and synthesized thus far