The Molecular Biology of Schizosaccharomyces pombe

This book on the molecular gearings of fission yeast is cordially dedicated to Carsten Bresch, Michi Egel-Mitani, Herbert Gutz, Paul Nurse, Amar Klar, and Urs Leupold. With these candid personalities - all influential to the casting of my pro fessional and private career - I had the good fortune of sharing coauthorship at very significant steps towards developing a sensible touch for the subtle charm of this wonderful model organism (Bresch et al. 1968; Egel and Egel-Mitani 1974; Egel and Gutz 1981; Beach et al. 1982; Egel et al. 1984; Leupold et al. 1989). As to the timing of the book, repeated queries from participants at our Copenha gen EMBO courses on Molecular Genetics with the Fission Yeast Schizosaccharo myces pombe have indicated that a collective treatise on this subject would be highly welcome. This initial impression was overwhelmingly confirmed by the en thusiastic consent I met among the prospective authors when I first approached them on specific contributions to present their field of expertise - as well as by the encouraging support expressed by the Springer-Verlag crew. A notable prede cessor of this treatise, "The first attempt to assemble the lore of fission yeast" (Nasim et al. 1989), roughly coincided with the pioneering breakthrough of link ing the major cyclin-dependent kinase of fission yeast to cell cycle timing in gen eral - later awarded by the Nobel Prize to Paul Nurse.