Quark degrees of freedom in hadronic systems

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interactions. We review descriptions of hadronic systems motivated by QCD, analyzing the recent controversy between gluonic and bosonic degrees of freedom under the prism of the Cheshire Cat Principle. Our analysis leads to an optimal scheme to study hadronic properties. We proceed to extend this low energy descriptions to the deep inelastic regime.