By Dr P J Gearhart, Dr Tomas Lindahl and Professor Michael Neuberger FRS
DNA deamination (used to generate antibody diversity) is the only known programme in mammalian development in which the coding capacity of the genome is changed by targeted modification of one of the DNA bases. The same process, however, is used to attack lentiviruses (eg HIV). This meeting will bring together interested immunologists, virologists, cancer scientists and DNA repair biochemists.