Benventuto Pernis – författare

This volume contains the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held in Porto Conte (Alghero), Sardinia, September 15-27, 1991. The A. S. 1. was attended by 86 graduate and postgraduate students from 18 different countries, and was hosted by the newly founded International Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Porto Conte, directed by Prof. Marcello Siniscalco. The A. S. I. was funded by NATO Scientific Affairs Division, the International Union of Immunological Societies, the European Community (Directorate General for Science, Research and Development), the Italian Research Council, and the San Raffaele Institute of Milano. In addition, a number of students who reside in the U. S. received travel funds from the U. S. National Science Foundation, and the Turkish National Fund provided financial assistance to several students from Turkey. When we decided to organize a course on T lymphocytes, our concern was to reach a balance between the teaching of both the hard core principles and the latest experimental findings of cellular immunology, and the recently expanded interfaces with the not-yet­ known: hypotheses, speCUlations, new projections to be born from the discussions.

This volume contains the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held in Porto Conte (Alghero), Sardinia, September 15-27, 1991. The A. S. 1. was attended by 86 graduate and postgraduate students from 18 different countries, and was hosted by the newly founded International Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Porto Conte, directed by Prof. Marcello Siniscalco. The A. S. I. was funded by NATO Scientific Affairs Division, the International Union of Immunological Societies, the European Community (Directorate General for Science, Research and Development), the Italian Research Council, and the San Raffaele Institute of Milano. In addition, a number of students who reside in the U. S. received travel funds from the U. S. National Science Foundation, and the Turkish National Fund provided financial assistance to several students from Turkey. When we decided to organize a course on T lymphocytes, our concern was to reach a balance between the teaching of both the hard core principles and the latest experimental findings of cellular immunology, and the recently expanded interfaces with the not-yet­ known: hypotheses, speCUlations, new projections to be born from the discussions.

The progress in protein and nucleic acid chemistry together with improvements of the previously employed tissue culture techniques have led to the solution of problems such as that of the generation of antibody diversity or of the molecular structure of T and B cell membrane receptor for antigen which had challenged the past generations of immunologists. Thanks to this progress an impressive amount of knowledge has been accumulated on certain cell types that were relatively "mysterious" until recently. The B lymphocyte represents a typical example of such a cell. With these considerations in mind, we have started to organize a NATO summer school on "The molecular basis of B cell differentation and function" that had the specific aim of bringing up to date a selected number of young investigators. During the course, held in Santa Margheri ta Ligure, October 1-11, 1985 it became apparent that rather than a formal school we had organized an informal series of Workshops where both the Faculty members and the participants were discussing their own data in addition to reviewing the general progress in the field. The deep commi ttment of everyone to his research subj ect and the enthusiasm had caused this very successful change in the shape of the course. At the end we asked the members of the Faculty and the participants to write a summary of their data and of their point of view on selected subj ect s.