Our present concepts ofthe regulation of enzyme activity in the cell have been largely based on the extensive body of work which has been carried out with micro-organisms. A distinction between constitutive and adaptive enzymes had already been made well before World War II and work on enzyme adaptation, both in yeast and bacteria, was done by several workers, especially Marjorie Stephenson and her group in Cambridge in the 1930s. In studies starting about 1947 Stanier demonstrated that the oxidation of aromatic compounds by species of Pseudomonas involved the coordinate and sequential...

Sir Francis Avery Jones 149 Harley Street, London, WlN 2DE, U.K. This first international symposium on Mucus in Health and Disease brought together medical scientists, physiologists, pharmacologists, physicians, surgeons, gynaecologists, ophthalmologists, anatomists, biologists, medical engineers and biochemists - a spectrum which indicates the wide field of interest in mucus both in health and in disease. The idea for the meeting came from Dr. S. Gottfried whose researches led to the development of carbenoxolone, a substance which stimulates mucus production and in this way favours the...