Since 1982, our ever-expanding group of investigators has been meeting in exotic parts of the world to discuss aspects of three enzyme systems. The 1996 meeting was no exception. Nearly 90 scientists from 15 countries met in the small city of Deadwood, South Dakota, for four days of stimulating talks and posters and incredible scenery. Once more this meeting reflected the changing trends in biochemical research. At the 1982 meeting most of the speakers discussed isolating new enzymes and trying to characterize them. At this meeting many speakers discussed interpretations of three-dimensional struc ture or regulatory elements of the genes controlling for the tissue-specific expression of the enzyme. Hopefully, readers will find the proceedings of the meeting to be of interest. Though they reflects the scientific information that was presented at the meeting, they do not indicate the level of personal interactions that went on during the meeting. Once again, the willingness of the participants to discuss unpublished data and to share thoughts about the future directions of their research helped make this, like our previous seven meetings, a special scientific experience for those who attended.

The Sixth International Workshop on the Enzymology and Molecular Biology of Carbonyl Metabolism was held outside of Dublin, Ireland at the end of June, 1992. Prof. Keith Tipton, Chairman of the Biochemistry Department at Trinity College, kindly agreed to host the meeting. On behalf of all of us who attended I wish to extend our sincere thanks to the whole Tipton family for making us feel so welcome in Ireland. It has been a decade since the frrst workshop was held in Bern, Switzerland. The scope of the meetings reflected somewhat the changes that have occurred in biochemistry during the past decade. At the first meeting primarily enzymes and their properties were discussed. At this last meeting many of the talks centered on gene regulation as well as more traditional aspects of enzymology and metabolism. During the past decade site directed mutagenesis to probe for the active site of an enzyme has become part of traditional enzymology; this was virtually unheard of at our frrst meeting. Many of the presenters now used this tool to study some aspect of structure and function of one of the three carbonyl metabolizing enzymes.