Frontiers of Life

Frontiers of Life addresses fields of biology in terms of their frontiers--that is, the areas that will demand the most work in this new century. Because of their standing, the editors have been able to unite the most prestigious and well-informed authorities to place recent scientific advances into the context of their effects on daily human experiences and expectations. They ask, "What frontiers of the biological sciences will constitute the challenges of the next century?" Their first answer is an understanding of the processes and mechanisms that led to the origin of life. They take this answer as the starting point of the first section of the Encyclopedia. They thus proceed throughout the four volumes.
Separating this Encyclopedia form others is its multidisciplinary approach to the "frontiers" theme. While other encyclopedias strive to describe the past and present states of many subjects, Frontiers of Life offers the insights of world-class scientists into their subjects' growth areas.


Key Features
* Includes Advisory Board with each member a Nobel Laureate
* Written by contributors playing leading roles in their fields of expertise
* Contains almost 3,000 full color tables and figures, illustrating the 205 articles; color running heads and subtitles within each article make reading easy
* Presents biology as an organizing force of life in every article, from the cellular level to the interpersonal

Dr. Renato Dulbecco is President Emeritus and Distinguished Resident Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Known for his pioneering work in cancer-causing viruses, Dulbecco was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine/physiology in 1975. At the beginning of his career, Dulbecco devoted his work to the study of virology. During his early research, he developed what continues to be the most widely used technique for growing and maintaining cells in culture and for measuring the activity of animal viruses, such as poliovirus. Subsequently, Dulbecco, working with cancer-producing viruses, was able to show how genes of the virus interact with those of the host cell in tissue culture, which was a fundamental discovery in understanding the uncontrolled proliferation of cells in the cancer process. Dulbecco was born and educated in Italy, and he received his doctorate of medicine from the University Turin in 1936. He joined the Salk Institute as one of the original group of Fellows in 1963 and was associated with the Institute until 1972. From 1972 through 1977, Dulbecco was Deputy Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratory in London. Since rejoining the Salk Institute in 1977, he has held the position of Distinguished Research Professor and Senior Clayton Foundation Investigator. In 1988 he was named President of the Salk Institute. Dulbecco's more recent research has involved the study of the origin of breast cancer. He has studied the various cell types that comprise breast tissue, a necessary first step in the process of understanding how some cells undergo transformation and become malignant. Dulbecco has used monoclonal antibody techniques to study breast cancer in laboratory animals and in humans, with the objective of developing new and reliable means of classifying cells in the breast, and identifying those that may be susceptible to carcinogenic agents. Some of the antibodies he produced have been studied for clinical

Microbiologist, educator. Gairdner Foundation Annual Award, 1975; US Steel Award in Molecular Biology, 1974. Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1975.

Professor of genetics, member of the Academie des Sciences, 1977, foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 1962, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1964, Royal Society, London, 1973. Prix Charles Léopold Mayer, Academie des Sciences, 1962. Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1965.

Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research, 1969-1978. Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1986.