Many clinical problems of transport have been known for decades, particularly those disorders involving the liver and kidney. As a result of the dramatic increase in interest in transport at the membrane level the Society devoted its Seventeenth Symposium, held at Leeds during September 1979, to Transport and Inherited Disease, the result of that meeting forming the basis of this monograph. For the occasion over a hundred members and guests of the Society were joined by many invited speakers from Europe and the USA to discuss this rapidly developing field with special reference to the direct interests of the Society - in­ herited metabolic disease. The major theme of the meeting was opened with formal scientific presentations on membrane structure, synthesis and the regulation of epithelial transport. These were followed by discussions of specific problems of transport in brain, kidney and red blood cells. Almost all of these later lectures had clinical applications with cystic fibrosis and nephro­ genic diabetes insipidus featuring as examples of the common inherited diseases. The Hudson Memorial Lecture was delivered by Professor H. Bickel (Heidelberg). This outstanding review lecture on 'Phenylketonuri- past, present and future' is reproduced in the Journal of the Society - the Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease (Volume 3 No.4, pp.123-132). xiii xiv PREFACE The members' papers (both oral and poster) are also being reprinted in various issues of the Journal (published by MTP Press Ltd., Lancaster, UK).