A puzzling epidemiological problem was the driving force behind the discovery of human adenoviruses by Wallace Rowe and his colleagues 30 years ago. The de velopment of a plaque assay for poliomyelitis virus in 1953 led us to the threshold of quantitative virology, and in the same year the double-helical structure of DNA was discovered and became a cornerstone of mo lecular biology. The potential of adenoviruses as research tools in the molecular and cellular biology of eukaryotic cells was recognized as early as the late 1950s and early 1960s by several investigators. Structural and biochemical stu dies dominated the early years. In 1962, some of the adenoviruses were the first human viruses shown to be oncogenic in experimental animals. Thus adenovirology offered the investigator the entire gamut of host cell interactions, productive and abortive, as well as trans formed and tumor cell systems. The possibilities that adenoviruses afforded for the study of the molecular biology and genetics of eukaryotic cells were fully rea lized in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

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Structure and Assembly of Adenoviruses. With 6 Figures.- The Mechanism of Adenovirus DNA Replication and the Characterization of Replication Proteins. With 8 Figures.- The Origin of Adenovirus DNA Replication. With 3 Figures.- A New Mechanism for the Initiation of Replication of ?29 and Adenovirus DNA: Priming by the Terminal Protein. With 6 Figures.- The Messenger RNAs from the Transforming Region of Human Adenoviruses. With 4 Figures.- In Vitro Transcription of Adenovirus Genes. With 9 Figures.- Adenovirus Early Gene Regulation and the Adeno-associated Virus Helper Effect. With 10 Figures.- Antibodies to Synthetic Peptides Targeted to the Transforming Genes of Human Adenoviruses An Approach to Understanding Early Viral Gene Function. With 6 Figures.- On the Mechanism of Recombination Between Adenoviral and Cellular DNAS: The Structure of Junction Sites. With 17 Figures.