The rapid development and recent advances in this field seemed to justify a further meeting dealing primarily with protein interconversions and their biological significance rather soon after the first symposium of this kind, held under the direction of Professor G. BONSIGNORE of Genoa, in Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy, in May 1970. The proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Metabolic Interconversion of Enzymes, held in Rottach-Egern, in the Bavarian Alps, from October 27-30, 1971, under the auspices of the "Gesellschaft Deutscher N aturforscher und Arzte" bear witness to the...

Previous symposia on Metabolic Interconversion of Enzymes were held in 1970 (Santa Margherita-Ligure, Italy), 1971 (Rottach-Egern, Ger- many), 1973 (Seattle, USA) and 1975 (Arad, Israel). The present pub- lication reports the proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Metabolic Interconversion of Enzymes, held in Titisee/Black Forest (Germany) from October 1st-5th, 1980. In the last few years, the number of enzymes for which control of activity by enzyme-catalyzed covalent modification, i.e., by intercon- version, is of recognized metabolic importance has increased so much that is was...

Proteinases were among the first enzymes to be investigated biochemi- cally, and purification and crystallization especially of proteolytic enzymes of the digestive tract has contributed much to our present knowledge of enzymic structure and mechanisms of catalysis. However, for a long time little has been known about the functional aspects of proteinases. The only exception from this have been the digestive tract enzymes responsible for extracellular catalysis of protein breakdown and supply of amino acids for new-protein assembly and nitrogen metab- olism in the respective organs. The work...