~ ] O O K [ ~ E V I E W S

Organelles (Macmillan Molecular Biology Series)

by M. Carroll, Macmillan, 1989. £25.00 hbk, ~8.95 pbk (xvii + 202 pages) ISBN 0 333 44243 1

In July 1762, Dr Johnson was asked if he was a botanist. 'No Sir. I am not a botanist;' he replied 'and, should I wish to become a botanist, I must first turn myself into a reptile.' Now I know that Boswell tried later to make excuses for him, saying that Johnson was really talking about his poor eye- sight, but I can't say I find that con- vincing. The fact remains that the good Doctor seems to have been distinctly unenthusiastic about plants and plant science - after all, his classic definition of oats is almost as damning of the plant as it is of Scotsmen. The problem is that this rather lukewarm approach to the plant world is far from unique to Dr Johnson, and examples of it have been remarked upon often enough in the pages of T/G. But what has all this got to do with Organelles by Mark Carroll? Well, the point is that if one wanted to level a criticism at the book, it would be that the coverage of the plant aspects of the topic seems rather cursory by comparison with the coverage of other areas. Chloroplasts are discussed, certain- ly, but they are left till last (and I suspect not out of a desire to leave the most interesting topic till the end), and other plastids such as amyloplasts and chromoplasts are specifically excluded. And that is a pity - I live in the hope of finding a book that will explain something that's worried me ever since I was very small; the question of why carrots (which after all spend their lives underground) should be orange. Other important structures get omitted too, such as the tono- plast, and a plant without its vacuoles would be a pretty dismal thing indeed.

But I don't want to be disparag- ing, because I enjoyed reading the book, and learned a great deal in

doing so. There are also chapters on the nucleus, the endoplasmic reticulum (where, as in life, you take the rough with the smooth), the Golgi, lysosomes, peroxisomes and glyoxisomes, and mitochon- dria. These all seemed quite full and accurate, although I was a bit surprised to find no mention of 'promiscuous DNA' (the transposi- tion of DNA between organelles) - and there are other smaller omis- sions or inaccuracies, too (as well as those I've mentioned in the plant sections).

I found a number of features particularly helpful. One was the chapter on the experimental study of organelles, which gives clear and straightforward coverage of imaging, biochemical, immuno- chemical and molecular biological techniques, and would be a useful addition to any biochemical text- book, not just one on organelles. The second feature was the abun-

dance of diagrams and pictures (although one or two have not reproduced as clearly as one would like). The third was the provision of questions (and, I am grateful to report, answers) at the end of each chapter.

These three will make a great contribution to the attractiveness of the book for undergraduate teaching, and I would be happy to use it for that, allowing for the weaker areas that I've already mentioned. Incidentally, in an idle moment (of which I have few), I read the sequencing gel shown on the front cover and screened the EMBL database with it. It's coxsackievirus. It gets everywhere these days.

CmUS~rOPI-IF, R HOWE

Department of Biocbemisto', University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road. Cambridge

CB21QI~ UK

The Division and Segregation of Organelles (Society for

Experimental Biology Seminar Series 35)

edited by Stephen A. Boffey and David Lloyd, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

£30.00/$59.50 (xi + 252 pages) ISBN 0 521 33436 5

The genomes of mitochondria and chloroplasts are present in many copies per cell, often packaged in many organelles. When a cell divides, the replication and parti- tioning of both the genomes and the organelles must be controlled to ensure that most cells have approximately the right number of copies most of the time, although the control need not be as stringent as in the case of nuclear chromo- somes. These control mechanisms are vitally important to any organ- ism that relies on photosynthesis and respiration, either directly or indirectly. The subject is intellectu-

TIG NOVEMBER 1989 VOL. 5, NO. 11

3;8~

ally fascinating to biologists, but one lesson from the 13 papers in this symposium volume is that we still know very little about the replication and segregation of organelles. A major reason is that the problems have not been attacked by the combined applica- tion of modern techniques of genetics, molecular biology and cell biology in good experimental organisms, a strategy that has proved so fruitful in analysing the behavior of nuclear genomes.

The purely cell biological approach is used in papers on plas- tid division and the control of plas- tid size, number and DNA content in plant leaves by environmental conditions and nuclear ploidy (Possingham et al.; Leech and Pyke; Butterfass; Whatley); and on changes in organelle number, mor- phology and association with the nucleus seen during gametogenesis in angiosperms (Dickinson and Li). These studies rely heavily on classi- cal light and electron microscopy and autoradiography, to the exclu- sion of more recent techniques such as video-enhanced microscopy and fluorescent stain- ing with monoclonal antibodies. The reliance on a few kinds of data