Bio-organic Chemistry has corne of age - the sign of this is the start of a new series of Lecture Notes that are the product and substrate of spreading this line of modern knowledge among graduate students and research workers in such fields as mechanistic biochemistry, bio­ mimetic organic chemistry, biotechnological application of enzymology, to name only a few examples of how many frontiers are opened and borders lifted - just at. the time when the demand for a'''Synthetic Biology" and "Molecular Biotechnology" is increasing - fields that have been neglected for (too) long a time by "classical" chemists in curricula and imagination. We hope that through this first volume, which pOints in the several directions mentioned above, the profile of the undertaking will become clear and that it will find resonance among the scientific community interested in the thoughtful application of chemical and physical con­ cepts to biochemical and molecular-biological problems.

Bio-organic Chemistry has corne of age - the sign of this is the start of a new series of Lecture Notes that are the product and substrate of spreading this line of modern knowledge among graduate students and research workers in such fields as mechanistic biochemistry, bio­ mimetic organic chemistry, biotechnological application of enzymology, to name only a few examples of how many frontiers are opened and borders lifted - just at. the time when the demand for a'''Synthetic Biology" and "Molecular Biotechnology" is increasing - fields that have been neglected for (too) long a time by "classical" chemists in curricula and imagination. We hope that through this first volume, which pOints in the several directions mentioned above, the profile of the undertaking will become clear and that it will find resonance among the scientific community interested in the thoughtful application of chemical and physical con­ cepts to biochemical and molecular-biological problems.