The 1997 European Conference on Spectroscopy of Biological Molecules (ECSBM) is the seventh in a biennial series of conferences devoted to the applications of molecular spectroscopy to biological molecules and related systems. The interest of these conferences rests mainly on the relationship between the structure and physiological activity of biological molecules and related systems of which these molecular species form part. This volume ofECSBM contains articles prepared by the invited lecturers and those making poster presentations at the seventh ECSBM. The reader will find mainly applications of vibrational spectroscopy to protein structure and dynamics, biomembranes, molecular recognition, nucleic acids and other biomolecules and biological systems containing specific chromophors. Biomedical applications of vibrational spectroscopy are expanding rapidly. On the other hand, a significant number of the papers describe applications of other methods, such as NMR, circular dichroism, optical absorption and fluorescence, X-ray absorption and diffraction and other theoretical methods. One aim has been to achieve a well balanced, critically comparative review of recent progress in the field of biomolecular structure, bonding and dynamics based on applications of the above spectroscopic methods. A great part of the contributions included in this volume are devoted to biomedical and biotechnological applications and provide a broadly based account of recent applicationS in this field. The content of this book has been organized in sections corresponding mainly to the different types of biological molecules investigated. This book includes also another section related to theoretical methods where MO calculations of vibrational frequencies dominate clearly the topic.