It is an honor and a challenge for me to serve as the third Editor of the Annual Review of Nutrition. The honor ensues from the quality level established by my predecessors. Dr. William Darby at Vanderbilt University, ably assisted by Drs. Harry Broquist and Robert Olson as Associate Editors, began this series in 1981 and guided the first five years of development. Dr. Olson then became Editor and spanned the next ten years with the successive services of Drs. Beutler, Broquist, Bier, and myself as Associate Editors. This past July 1 began my term as Editor with the excellent Associate Editor colleagueship of Dr. Dennis Bier, MD, of the U.S.D.A./A.R.S. Children's Nutrition Research Center in Houston and Dr. Alan Goodridge, PhD, of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Iowa. I note with gratitude that many of the suggestions for topics and authors here represented derive from the work of our Editorial Committee, a group of established professionals from various fields of investigative nutrition. At this time we are pleasantly assisted by Ann Dahlquist, the Production Editor on-site at Annual Reviews Inc. in Palo Alto.

The papers to be included in forthcoming issues in this series will continue to represent the spectrum of subjects that constitute nutrition as a broad discipline. This range of coverage is appropriate given the genesis and growth both of the science and of the application of its findings. As noted by Dr. Darby and his associates in the Preface to Volume 1, the science of nutrition gradually emerged from physiology, pathology, medicine, and organic and agricultural chemistries. In the Foreword to Volume 1, J. Murray Luck, who founded Annual Reviews Inc. and served as the first Editor of the Annual Review of Biochemistry, mentioned that much of the science of nutrition that had been covered under the biochemistry label became a spin-off series, just as had a subset of physiology-based findings pertaining to animals and plants.

We see this process of growth in disciplines requiring reviews: biophysics, molecular and cellular biologies, and molecular genetics. These latter fields are interdigitating with modern nutritional science. As we, among others, solicit papers that review the newer aspects of the science of nutrition, we will continue to include the extensions of these basic findings toward the purposes enumerated in the Preface to Volume 1. Some of these, e.g. public health and medicine, interface with other Annual Reviews series. As stated by Dr. Olson in the Preface to Volume 5 of the Annual Review of Nutrition, "Because of the multidisciplinary nature of nutrition...many of the advances in our understanding of both basic and applied nutrition may, in fact, be made by investigators who are not considered by themselves or their colleagues as nutritionists." In our ongoing effort to present advances in nutrition, our editorial committee will continue to invite chapters from these potential authors, as well as from those more usually considered nutritionists. We shall also strive to maintain the quality achieved through the judicious selection of authors and topics by our editorial predecessors.

Finally, I thank the authors of chapters in the present volume for their professional time and personal courtesy. I anticipate working with stimulating colleagues who share my desire to relay the news from nutrition's expanding frontiers.

Donald B. McCormick, Editor