Preface/Front Matter

Abstract

Almost a decade has passed since the publication of the first edition of The Molecular Biology of Tumor Viruses. In the interim, so much has happened in the field of tumor virology that the current volume can only dimly be viewed as a revision of the first. In the first edition, RNA tumor viruses commanded about 200 pages of the 700 or so in the entire volume; now RNA tumor viruses (or, more properly, retroviruses) require a massive volume of their own, with almost 1400 pages of text and appendixes. This profusion of information has required an editorial consortium, a large collection of authors and critics, and a major effort by the Cold Spring Harbor Publications staff to assemble a monograph that is almost entirely new, but one, we hope, that preserves the qualities that made the first edition so useful for both new and old members of the tumor virus community. Of the material appearing in the first edition, only a little remains—some historical perspectives to be found in Chapter 1 and a scattering of figures and tables throughout the remainder of the book.

The enthusiasm required to assemble this large book has been fired by remarkable progress during the past several years in efforts to describe the major biochemical and genetic features of the curious viruses we study: the organization of viral RNA and proviral DNA; the strategies for viral replication and gene expression; the nature and origin of viral transforming genes; and the structure and function