Cover. 'Kompakt' (2000) by Silvia Stabel. Acrylic and filler on canvas (50 x 70 cm). 'Viruses: simple structures yet highly complicated and on the verge of living. They propagate at the expense of living organisms, causing disease and suffering--even death. Beautiful and regular in structure, they are baffling and have challenged researchers ever since their discovery'. Silvia Stabel did her PhD on adenoviral transformation and worked as a group leader on signal transduction at the Max Delbrück Laboratory in Cologne. She is now a full-time painter (sistabel@web.de). 'Kompakt' was first shown at a public exhibition entitled LIFE.SCIENCE.ART designed by Ellen Peerenboom and Silvia Stabel at the Institute of Plant Biochemistry in Halle.