Preface; 1. Prebiotic systems and evolutionary pathways Stanley L. Miller, Manfred Eigen, Peter Schuster, Susumu Ohno, Marty Jabara, Christof K. Biebricher, Ruthild Winkler-Oswatitsch, Andreas Dress and Lloyd Demetrius; 2. Nucleic acids and informational systems John C. W. Shepard, Ulf Lagerkvist, Glenn R. Bjork, Okle C. Uhlenbeck, R. Rigler, F. Claesens, L. Nilsson, A. Liljas, S. Thirup, A. T. Matheson, J. A. Lake, E. Henderson, M. W. Clark, A. Scheinman, M. I. Oakes, John N. Abelson, Edward N. Brody, Soo-Chen Cheng, Michael W. Clark. Phillip R. Green, Gloria Dalbadie-McFarland, Ren-Jang Lin, Andrew J. Newman, Eric M. Phizicky, Usha Vijayraghavan, Richard E. Dickerson, Mary L. Kopka, Phillip Pjura, John M. Rosenberg, Judith A. McClarin, Christin A. Frederick, Bi-Cheng Wang, Herbert W. Boyer, Patricia Greene, L. Wieslander, C. Hoog, U. Lendahl, B. Daneholt, K. Hammarstrom, C. Bark, G. Westin, J. Zabielski, and U. Pettersson; 3. Proteins and enzymatic functions Shosaka Numa, J. R. Tata, Viktor Mutt, Sture Falkmer, Eva Dafgaed, Wilhelm Engstrom, Tom Blundell, Hans Neurath, Hans Jornvall, Richard M. Lawn, Earl W. Davie, Carl-Ivar Branden, R. G. Brennan, L. H. Weaver, B. W. Matthews, Robert Huber, H. Baltscheffsky, M. Lundin, C. Luxemburg, P. Nyren, M. Baltscheffsky, J. E. Walker, A. L. Cozens, L. Ernster, T. Hundal, B. Norling, G. Sandri, L. Wojtczak, V. A. Grinkevich, N. N. Modyanov, Yu. A. Ovchinnikov, Bengt Mannervik and Bo G. Malmstrom; 4. Complex systems and organization Robert C. Gallo, A. M. Colberg-Poley, S. D. Voss, P. Gruss, Robert T. Schimke, Steven W. Sherwood, Anna B. Hill, Frederik Lindberg, Susanne Lindquist, Staffan Normark, Michael G. Rossmann, Edward Arnold, John W. Erickson, Elizabeth A. Frankenberger, James P. Griffith, Hans-Jurgen Hecht, John E. Johnson, Greg Kamer, Ming Luo, Gerrit Vriend, Anne G. Mosser, Ann C. Palmenberg, Roland R. Rueckert, Barbara Sherry, Goran Wadell, Annica Allard, Magnus Exander, Li Quan-gen, Patricia H. Clarke, Susumu Tonegawa, Haruo Saito, Hans Wigzell, Alexander von Gabain, Monica Ohlsson, Eleonor Lindstrom, Erik Lundgren and Gerald M. Edelman.