OVERVIEW: The challenges to life at extremely high temperature Frank Robb, Garo Antranikain, Arnold Driessen, and Dennis Grogan MOLECULAR BASIS OF THERMOSTABILITY Extrinsic protein stabilization H. Santos The relationship between catalytic activity, structural flexibility and conformational stability as deduced from the analysis of mesophilic - thermophilic enzyme pairs and protein engineering studies R. Sterner and E. Bruner Membranes and membrane proteins A. J. M. Driessen and S-V. Albers Protein chaperones F. T. Robb and P. Laksanalamai Physical Properties of Membranes Composed of Tetraether Archaeal Lipids P. L-G Chong HEAT-STABLE ENZYMES AND METABOLISM Glycolysis in hyperthermophiles P. Schoenheit The industrial relevance of thermophiles and their enzymes G. Antranikian, Denitrification pathway enzymes of extremophiles S. DeVries and I. Schroder GENETICS OF THERMOPHILES DNA repair and mutagenesis M. F. White, D. T. Grogan Plasmids and cloning vectors for thermophilic archaea K. M. Stedman Genetic analysis in extremely thermophilic bacteria: An overview D. W. Grogan Establishing gene function in archaea by targeted mutagenesis H. Atomi and T. Imanaka Nanobiotechnological potential of viruses of hyperthermophilic archaea. T. Basta and D. Prangishvili MINIMAL COMPLEXITY MODEL SYSTEMS Master keys to DNA replication, repair, and recombination from the structural biology of enzymes from thermophiles L. Fan, R. S. Williams, D. S. Shin, B. Chapados, and J. A. Tainer DNA replication in thermophiles J-H Shin, L. M. Kelman and Z. Kelman DNA binding proteins and DNA topology K. Sandman Structure and function of the Thermus ribosome S. T. Gregory and A. E. Dalberg Protein Phosphorylation at 80 C and Beyond P. J. Kennelly The 20S Proteasome from (Hyper)thermophilic Archaea: Model System for Protein Degradation J. K. Michel and R. M. Kelly