  The production of D*+-(2010) mesons in deep inelastic scattering has been
measured in the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 37
pb^-1. The decay channels D*+ -> D0 pi+(+c.c.), with D0 -> K- pi+ or D0 ->K-
pi- pi+ pi+, have been used to identify the D mesons. The e+p cross section for
inclusive D*+- production with 1<Q^2<600 GeV^2 and 0.02<y<0.7 is 8.31 +-
0.31(stat.) +0.30-0.50(syst.) nb in the kinematic region 1.5< pT(D*+-)<15 GeV
and |eta(D*+-)|<1.5. Differential cross sections are consistent with a
next-to-leading-order perturbative-QCD calculation when using
charm-fragmentation models which take into account the interaction of the charm
quark with the proton remnant.
  The observed cross section is extrapolated to the full kinematic region in
pT(D*+-) and eta(D*+-) in order to determine the charm contribution,
F^ccbar_2(x,Q^2), to the proton structure function. The ratio
  F^ccbar_2/F_2 rises from ~10% at Q^2 ~1.8 GeV^2 to ~30% at Q^2 ~130 GeV^2 for
x values in the range 10^-4 to 10-3.
