The student of biological science in his final years as an undergraduate
and his first years as a graduate is expected to gain some familiarity
with current research at the frontiers of his discipline. New research
work is published in a perplexing diversity of publications and is
inevitably con- cerned with the minutiae of the subject. The sheer
number of research journals and papers also causes confusion and
difficulties of assimilation. Review articles usually presuppose a
background knowledge of the field and are inevitably rather restricted
in scope. There is thus a need for short but authoritative introductions
to those areas of modern biological research which are either not dealt
with in standard introductory textbooks or are not dealt with in
sufficient detail to enable the student to go on from them to read
scholarly reviews with profit. This series of books is designed to
satisfy this need. The authors have been asked to produce a brief
outline of their subject assuming that their readers will have read and
remembered much of a standard introductory textbook of biology. This
outline then sets out to provide by building on this basis, the
conceptual framework within which modern research work is progressing
and aims to give the reader an indication of the problems, both
conceptual and practical, which must be overcome if progress is to be
maintained.