This volume contains the texts of the nineteen lectures presented at the NATO-ASI - FEBS Course on "DNA - ligand interactions: from drugs to proteins." The Advanced Study Institute (ASIl was held from August 30th to September 11th. 1986 in the Abbey of Fontevraud (France). The ASI was attended by 112 participants from a wide scientific horizon and from twentyone different countries. It was in some way a follow-up of the ASI held in Maratea. Italy in May 1981 and which was published in the NATO ASI Life Science series as volume 45. While much has been learned about the way the cellular...

The Workshop on "Evolutionary Tinkering in Gene Expression" which was held at the end of August 1988. was planned to celebrate 20 successful Advanced Study Institutes (A. S. I.) in Molecular and Cell Biology. The first Institute was held in 1966 on the Island of Spetsai. after a N. A. T. O. suggestion and was entirely financed by N. A. T. O. The success was immediately so great that the Institute grew very rapidly and in the following years. N. A. T. O .- E. M. B. O. (since 1972) and F. E. B. S. (since 1981) co-sponsored it. Since the start of the AS . the U. S. National Science Foundation...

The Ninth Course of the International School of Cosmology and Gravita- tion of the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture is concerned with "Topological Properties and Global Structure of Space-Time." We consider this topic to possess great importance. Our choice has also been influenced by the fact that there are many quest ions as yet unre- solved. Standard general relativity describes space-time as a four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold, but it does not prescribe its large-scale structure. Inorderto attempt answers to some topological questions, such as whether our universe...