Regulation of Choloroplast Biogenesis

From July 28 to August 3, 1991, an International Meeting on the REGULATION OF CHLOROPLAST BIOGENESIS was held at the capsis Beach Hotel in Aghia Pelaghia, on the island of crete, Greece. The Meeting (Advanced Research Workshop-Lecture Course) was co-sponsored by NATO, FEBS and IUB, and was held under the auspices of the International society for Chloro- plast Development, the Greek Ministry of Industry, Research and Technol- ogy, and the National Center for Scientific Research 'Demokritos'. The Meeting focused on recent advances in the field of chloroplast biogenesis and the regulatory mechanisms underlined, and brought together over 120 experts and students of the field from 22 countries. The subject of chloroplast biogenesis has experienced great progress in recent years mainly thanks to the application of Molecular Biology techniques and methodology. New findings that emerge gradually unravel the regulatory mechanisms involved in the assembly, stabilization and growth of the photosynthetic units in thylakoids, the signal transduction chain leading from photoreception to gene expression, the transport of nuclear-coded proteins into stroma-soluble supramolecular enzyme complexes as well as thylakoid-bound supramolecular complexes, involved in light-energy transduction. It was the aim of this meeting to bring together experts and students coming from diverse disciplines (ranging from Botany and plant physiology to Molecular Biology, Biophysics and Biotechnology), to discuss the recent advances in the field so that thorough exchange of ideas and working hypotheses would be achieved.