Several theoretical aspects in leading (1-loop) and higher (2-loop) order as well as various approaches of extracting leading twist-2 parton distributions from structure function measurements are discussed and summarized. Their implications for the small-x region (x⩽10⁻²) are analyzed and compared with alternative approaches where higher twist contributions (‘fans’) are added to the twist-2 LO terms in the evolution equations. The second part of these lectures deals with longitudinally polarized parton distributions related to the structure functiong₁, in particular with various scenarios to explain the total spin structure of nucleons, including the gluon anomaly as well. Specific (realistic) tests for discriminating between these alternatives are discussed as well asx-dependent expectations, in particular for neutron targets in connection with the Bjorken sum rule. Furthermore, various theoretical expectations and sum rules for the transverse (chiral-even) structure functiong₂ are presented and very recent developments of transverse chiral-odd (‘transversity’) distributions are briefly discussed.