Designated with pride as one of the sponsor's anniversary publications commemorating ten years of effective promotion of "international cooperation in medical and chemical research," this volume containing the proceedings of a well-organized symposium on the biochemistry of gene action is another feather in the cap of the Ciba Foundation. With Montalenti as chairman, the symposium was held at the University of Naples (May 13-16, 1959), cosponsored by the International Union of Biological Sciences, and attended by a group of 29 experts in biochemical, cytological, and bacterial genetics. Although formal papers were contributed only by 14 participants, each report has been combined with a carefully edited transcript of the general discussion which followed the presentation.
In his introductory review of the remarkable progress which has recently been made in analyzing the genetic basis of human traits by means of highly refined laboratory techniques, Penrose presages a "molecular revolution." With biochemical methods