This book focuses on heat shock response-an active yet transient reprogramming of cellular activities to the needs of a stress protection mechanism designed to minimize heat damage and to optimize restoration of normal cellular activities after the stress period. This work places major emphasis on the structure and possible cellular functions of heat shock proteins as well as the analysis of heat shock protein-coding genes by transfection into homologous and heterologous expression systems. It also discusses heat shock effects on all levels of gene expression, on cell ultrastructure, and metabolic activities. This unique text is a must for all those who are involved with genetics, nucleic acids research, and cancer research.