Preface/Front Matter

Abstract

In November 1991, a Banbury Conference entitled “Receptor-mediated Virus Entry into Cells” brought together specialists of different disciplines of biological and medical sciences: virology, structural biology, cell biology, pathology, immunology, pharmacology, and others. The program, organized by R.A. Weiss and myself, was as complex as it was exciting. Subsequent to the Banbury Conference, it was decided to gather the most relevant information about viral receptors and viral cell invasion and publish it in the form of a book. In two ways, however, these proceedings are not a chronicle of the Banbury Conference. First, not all participants were able to contribute a summary of their work. Second, several important chapters were written by colleagues who could not attend the meeting, or who had barely started to decipher the complexities of interactions between virion and host cell surface in the viral system of their choice. During the last two years, a deluge of discoveries of viral invasion has swept the literature. We are very fortunate that important discoveries, published as recently as September 1994, have found their way into this volume.

The chapters were broadly grouped under three topics: description of viral receptors, viral attachment and uptake, and receptor-related virus-host interactions. There are some overlaps, of course, but they should serve to expand the treatise of a specific subject.

As the success of a Banbury Conference at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1991 is the basis for the present book, we are grateful to Jan A. Witkowski and his colleagues at