This volume contains the Proceedings of the 25th Mosbach Colloquium, the general theme of which is the Biochemistry of Sensory Functions. It was intended, continuing the silver-tradition of these Colloquia, to provide the uninitiated biochemist with an insight into the current status of a line of research in Molecular Biology which, more than many other fields in Biochemistry, has maintained its contacts with and respect for Physiology. The speakers were asked to attempt to outline their topic sufficiently to define the fundamentals and to build up upon this basis the more sophisticated...

The topic of this Mosbach Colloquium was meant as a question to begin with. When I started to study differentiation and morphogenesis in Volvox I hoped for a straightforward answer along prepared groove- only to find out that also here things follow Murphy's Law: they were much more complicated than expected Succour had to be sought. Thus, the idea arose to put this question before a board of experts. Experience would have warned any ex-service man never to utter an idea or else you would be made responsible, and it came as it had to come: I was made impressario of this gremium; I had to...

The topic of this years' osbach Colloquium was DNA integration. We have tried to bring together experts from different fields of research who are studying natural processes by which DNA molecules from differ ent sources are linked. It has been known for a long time that such linkage occurs between the chromosomes of bacteriophages and plasmids on the one hand and the chromosome of the bacterial host on the other. This process has been especially well studied in bacteriophage A. Since it is controlled in a complicated way, we began with a lecture by M. ptashne on these regulatory processes. H....