During October 18-31, 1980, the first course of the Inter national School of Pure and Applied Biostructure, a NATO Advanced Study Institute was held at the "Et tore Majorana Center for Scien tific Culture" in Erice, Sicily, co-sponsored by national and international agencies. The subject of the course was "Cell Growth", with participants (from 16 different countries) selected worldwide. The study of cell growth has been one of humanity's most challenging problems and it has been approached from many differ ent points of view, such as biochemistry, genetic engineering, cell biology, zoology, oncology, immunology, biophysics and a few other fields. It has been very difficult to keep such varied points of view all in one room and in one audience, because of the heterogeneity of background and inherent difficulty of communica tion, with occasional nominalistic rather than factual debates. This Institute aimed to bypass those limitations by approaching in a structured and tutorial fashion the problem of cell growth in three dimensions: (1) in terms of the various disciplines involv ed, from molecular to cellular biology, from genetic engineering to clinical oncology, from biophysics to immunology; (2) in terms of the system studied, from prokaryotes to eukaryotes and cancer cells; (3) in terms of the various levels of macromolecular orga nization, from membrane to cytoskeleton and chromatin.

Inhalt
Section I: What is a Cell?.- Structure of the Eukaryotic Cell.- Cell and Contractile Protein Evolution.- Discussion.- Section II: Cell Probes.- Immunocytological Methods.- Qualitative and Quantitative Immunoenzymatic Techniques.- Cell Fusion and the Introduction of New Information Into Temperature-Sensitive Mutants of Mammalian Cells.- Various Autoradiographic Methods as a Tool in Cell Growth Studies.- Recent Trends in Electron Microscope Autoradiography.- Growth Parameters in Normal and Tumor Cells: Non-Cycling Cells and Metastatic Variants as Monitored by Flow Cytometry.- Condensed Chromatin: Species-Specificity, Tissue-Specificity and Cell Cycle-Specificity as Monitored by Scanning Cytometry.- Discussion.- Section III: The Cell Cycle.- Growth and Division of Escherichia coli.- Developmental Regulation of Enzyme Synthesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.- The Cell Life Cycle and the G1 Period.- The Continuum Model: Application to G1 Arrest and G(0).- Protein and RNA Synthesis.- Cell Cycle Dependence of Erythroid Maturation.- Initiation of DNA Synthesis and Progression through the S Period.- Primary Cilia and Their Role in the Regulation of DNA Replication and Mitosis.- Regulation of Histone Gene Expression During the Cell Cycle and Coupling of Histone Gene Expression With Readout of Other Genetic Sequences.- Chromatin Structure, Histone Modifications and the Cell Cycle.- Histones of Transcriptionally Active and Inactive Chromatin of Mouse Cells.- Minor Components of the Chromatin and Their Role in the Release of Template Restriction.- Higher Order Chromatin Structure, Proteins, c-AMP, Ions Modifications and Cell Cycle Progression: Experimental Results and Polyelectrolyte Theory.- The Organization of Genes in Chromosomes in Some Ciliated Protozoa.- Cell Cycle Phase-specific Changes in Relaxation Times and Water Content in HeLa Cells.- Discussion.- Section IV: Normal Versus Abnormal Cell Growth.- Reverse Transformation of Chinese Hamster Cells by Cyclic AMP and Hormones.- Cell Conformation and Growth Control.- Coupling of Nuclear Morphometry to Cell Geometry. Its Role in the Control of Normal and Abnormal Cell Growth.- Informational Macromolecules in Stationary and Dividing Hepatocytes and Hepatomas.- Cell Growth and Nuclear DNA Increase by Endoreduplication and Differential DNA Replication.- Cell Transformation by RNA Sarcoma Virus.- Molecular Mechanisms of the Control of Cell Growth in Cancer.- Gene Mutation, Quantitative Mutagenesis, and Mutagen Screening in Mammalian Cells: Study with the CHO/HGPRT System.- Round Table Discussion on Mechanisms Controlling Normal Versus Abnormal Cell Growth.- Section V: Cell Kinetics and Clinical Applications.- Clinical Applications of Flow Cytometry.- The Relevance of Cell Kinetics in Determining Drug Activity in vitro.- Cell Kinetics in Clinical Oncology.- Round Table Discussion on Are Cell Kinetics Useful in Cancer Chemotherapy?.- VI: List of Participants.- VII: Contributor Index.- VIII: Subject Index.