Preface/Front Matter

Abstract

In June of 1982, a meeting was held at the Banbury Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in honor of the memory of Luigi Gorini. The participants heard speakers whose research was in the areas that Luigi had pioneered during his career. Out of this meeting has evolved this volume, which covers not only these research areas but several others at the forefront of bacterial genetics.

Luigi was an imaginative scientist, a great humanitarian, and a good friend. His great joy in research was to ask questions about the way in which bacteria “work” and to try to answer these questions by the clever use of genetics. Luigi isolated many different kinds of mutants, a number of which remain uncharacterized. What particularly intrigued him were the “funny” mutants—those derivative microorganisms that did not behave in the predicted manner. It was the analysis of “funny” mutants that provided Luigi with information that began many of the studies mentioned in this book. His insight and curiosity led to the isolation and analysis of mutants that affected protein secretion, gene regulation, the fidelity of translation, transcription-translation coupling, and other important biological processes. Luigi Gorini’s contribution to these areas is amply described in the Biographical Memoir by Jon Beckwith and Dan Fraenkel and in appropriate scientific reviews.

The development of understanding of the topics to which Luigi contributed and which are presented in this book owes much to the application of bacterial genetics. The intelligent isolation and characterization of mutants have provided most...