These are the proceedings of Eighth European Conference on the Spectroscopy of Biological Molecules, covering: proteins and peptides; chromophores and chromophoric proteins; nucleic acids; carbohydrates; lipids and biomembranes; biocomplex systems; and analytical and biomedical applications. Investigation of the structure and function of biological molecules through spectroscopic methods is a field requiring clever techniques and demanding experiments. The basic concepts are being applied to more and more complex systems, making feasible the study of the behaviour of whole systems in relation to molecular disturbances. The analytical potential of spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging enables species identification of bacteria and tissue recognition. Clear opportunities for "in vivo" applications become apparent in the medical field. The methods developed in biophysics start to generate spin-off in the direction of biotechnology, where in previous years this has happened for biochemical techniques. New directions are manifest. Tools are being developed to investigate the behaviour of single molecules in interaction with their environment.
Individual interactions can now be investigated and individual molecules in complexes can be visualized. Processes that were previously unobservable as a result of ensemble averaging can now be investigated on a single molecule level.