Preface/Front Matter

Abstract

In August 1981, at the suggestion of Jim Watson, a meeting was held at Cold Spring Harbor on the topic of nucleases. The idea was to bring together people who study these enzymes, but who do not usually meet as a group because their individual interests in nucleases are primarily in the context of some other field. Historically, nucleases have not usually been considered a field in their own right, rather they have been studied because of their role in some particular biological phenomena such as the four R’s — Replication, Recombination, Repair, and Restriction.

Within the last few years, considerable progress has been made in this area. Several nucleases, whose existence was not even suspected a few years ago, such as the resolvases involved in transposition and the splicing enzymes needed to process RNA in eukaryotes, are now the subject of intense study. Some nucleases show exquisite specificity, and nowhere has this been more apparent than in the elegant writhings of DNA induced by the topoisomerases. Since meddling with DNA in vitro is a popular pursuit, some nucleases such as the type-II restriction enzymes have been widely used as reagents. The demand for more such reagents is unlikely to abate.

The idea for this book was also Jim Watson’s and the meeting provided a timely mechanism to bring the authors together and intimidate them into writing chapters. The objective of the book is to provide comprehensive coverage of the many facets of the nucleases that would prove both interesting and