C O N T R I B U T O R S K E T C H E S

VOLUME 17 Photophysiological Functions of Visual Pigments Toru YOSHIZAWA, D. Sc., has been a professor of biophysics at the Faculty of Science of Kyoto University since 1971. Dr. Yoshizawa graduated from the Department of Biology of the Faculty of Science of Osaka Uni- versity in 1952, receiving his doctor's degree from there in 1961. He was on the staff of Osaka University until 1971. During this period he spent three years in Professor G. Wald's laboratory at Harvard University. Dr. Yoshizawa was awarded the Zoological Society of Japan Prize in 1970 and the Shimadzu Science Prize in 1983. His main interest has been on the mechanism of biological vision.

A Hypothesis for Neural Control of the Speed of Muscle Contraction in the Mammal Motoy KuNo, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor of physiology of the Kyoto University, Faculty of Medicine. From Kyoto University he received his M.D. in 1954 and his Ph.D. in physiology in 1959. From 1961 to 1964, Dr. Kuno worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Carlton C. Hunt at the University of Utah. In 1965 he joined the faculty of phys- iology at the Yale School of Medicine. After 4 years as an associate pro- fessor of physiology at the University of Utah, he accepted a post as a professor of physiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine where he stayed from 1971 to 1980. Dr. Kuno's early studies were concerned with mechanisms of transmitter release at central synapses. He later worked on trophic interactions between motoneurons and skeletal muscle and on plastic changes in central synapses.

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Molecular Organization of the Head of Bacteriophage Teven: Underlying Design Principles Mitsuhiro Y~,~AClDA, Ph.D., is a professor of biophysics of the Faculty of Science of Kyoto University. He graduated from the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the University of Tokyo in 1964 and obtained his Ph.D. from there in 1970. He was a research assistant from 1967 to 1970 irt the Institute of Molecular Biology of the University of Geneva and was a research associate in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine from 1970 to 1971. He joined Kyoto University as an associate professor in 1971 and was promoted to his present position in 1978. Dr. Yanagida's primary interest is now the molecular organization of mitotic chromosomes and the genetic control of the cell division cycle.

Yuko SUZUKI, M. Sc., spent two years in Dr. Yanagida's laboratory as a graduate student from 1978 to 1980 and studied bacteriophage T4 mor- phogenesis at low temperature. She is now a staff member of the Japanese branch of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industry).

Takashi TODA, Ph.D., was a graduate student in Dr. Yanagida's labora- tory from 1979 to 1984 and obtained his Ph.D. from Kyoto University in 1984. He studied phylogenetic relations among T4-related bacterio- phages while a senior student, and then the cell division cycle genes in- volved in chromosome segregation as a graduate student. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA.

Dynamic Structure of Biological and Model Membranes: Analysis by Optical Anisotropy Decay Measurement Kazuhiko KINOSlrA, Ph.D., is a research scientist in the Biophysics Lab- oratory of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research. Dr. Kinosita graduated from the Department of Physics of the University of Tokyo in 1969, where he did his graduate work in biophysics under Professor A. Ikegami. From 1976 to 1977 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Professor T.Y. Tsong's laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. There he made pores of controlled sizes in erythrocyte membranes by applying a high voltage pulse. In 1978 he joined Dr. A. Ikegami's group at the Institute of Physicla and Chemical Research. Dr. Kinosita has been study- ing molecular motions in biological systems using a "depolariscope".

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One of the things he hopes to understand is the molecular mechanism of biological energy transduction.

Suguru KAWATO, Ph.D., is a research associate in the Research Develop- ment Corporation of Tokyo. Dr. Kawato graduated from the Department of Physics of Kyoto University in 1974 and, from the Graduate School Course of Physics of the University of Tokyo in 1979. From 1979 to 1982, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. He has been interested in the mobility and interactions of membrane proteins.

Akira IKEGAMI, Ph.D., has been the Director of the Biophysics Laboratory at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research since 1977. Dr. Ike- gami graduated from the Faculty of Science of Nagoya University in 1953, and thereafter served as a research associate in the Department of Phys- iology and the Department of Physics of Nagoya University. From 1968 to 1978 he was an associate professor of biophysics at the Department of Physics of the University of Tokyo. His main interests are the dynamic structure and functions of membranes and proteins.