The parts of a key?

[Chris De Young]

Could someone point me to documentation describing the architecture of a 
key pair, and what gets used for what?  Specifically, the role of sub-keys.

I have:

$ gpg --list-keys chd
pub  1024D/379E6244 2001-09-28 Chris De Young <chd at chud.net>
uid                            Chris De Young <chd at arizona.edu>
uid                            Chris De Young <chd at scarrittgroup.com>
sub  2048g/E0BEF64A 2001-09-28

Someone sent me a message encrypted with E0BEF64A instead of 379E6244, and 
I realize that I don't fully understand the differences and functions of 
these key parts...

Thanks!
-Chris
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