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Regulation of Enzyme Activity

by J.H. Ottaway, IRL Press, 1988. £5.95 (x + 88 pages) ISBN 1 85221 072 9

IRL press runs several useful series and has many excellent titles in its list. Regulation of Enzyme Activity belongs to a new series, called In Focus. The slender volumes in this series are: 'Specifically written for students facing the problem of keeping up with rapidly moving areas in biology and medicine', or so says the back cover. The author of the book, J.H. Ottaway, seems less sure. The preface begins: 'This is not a guide to metabolic regula- tion . . . . ', and the first words of the text proper run: 'For reasons of space this book does not deal with irreversible cascades'. What then, the reader may wonder, will the book deal with in its generously illustrated 82 pages? And will it indeed keep a student, or someone like me, a typical biochemist with a deep mistrust if not actual aversion to enzyme kinetics, aufa i twi th current topics?

The answer is mixed. The examples used for illustration in this little book are without excep- tion interesting and apt - all the way from classical glycogen metabolism to the enzymology of vision, including topical items such as glutamine synthetase, ribo- nucleotide reductase, and even a whole chapter on plants, which takes a detailed look at the role of thioredoxin in regulating electron flow in photosynthesis.

The treatment is certainly mod- ern, but I am afraid I found it laconic to the point of incompre- hensibility. Time and again fasci- nating topics were introduced, but the discussion was so brief or so mathematical that it meant nothing to me, and I suspect that the only readers who will make much of this book are those already deeply versed in the mysteries of Michaelis and Menten, Briggs and Haldane, and Kacser and Burns, with a wide-ranging knowledge of cell

and molecular biology thrown in for good measure. It's as if two- thirds of the words had been left out in order to fit the book in a Procrustean format.

This is a great pity, because a modern treatment of this subject would be very welcome. Ottaway's first chapter on amplification, timescales and feedback could eas- ily be expanded to something like three times its present length, and the second chapter dealing with metabolic control theory likewise badly needs a treatment by some- one who can explain what the equations actually mean to the non-mathematically literate, as I am sure readers of the recent long-run- ning discussion in TIBS are aware. We were brought up on rate-limit-

ing steps but now, it seems, they don't exist. Much of the discussion and (I presume) the mathematical treatment is taken from control engineering - quite right too, I dare say - but these chaps don't seem to know about taps and valves, which do exist in biological systems, and are what interest me. I mean, cells either divide or they don't, and either they are or they are not an erythrocyte (to say noth- ing of the difference between noses and feet). I need leading gently by the hand, and in my ex- perience this is true of students, too.

TIM Htavr Department of Biochemistry, University of

Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QW, UK.

An Introduction to Recom- binant DNA Techniques: Basic

Experiments in Gene Manipulation

by Perry Hackett, James Fuchs and Joachim Messing, The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, 1988. £21.55 (xii + 243 pages) ISBN

0 8053 0138 0

In sharp contrast to 95% of books that figure the word 'introduction' in their title, this really is an intro- duction. The book starts with six chapters outlining the methodology and the strategies to be followed in the second half. This latter part consists of 20 experimental mod- ules that take the reader from growing a bacterial culture, through cloning and nucleotide sequence determination to sequence analysis.

Each module gives complete experimental protocols for an after- noon's practical work. Essentially this second part is a series of class sheets covering an elegant series of 20 linked experiments to give stu- dents precisely what the book title says, an introduction to recombi- nant DNA techniques.

TIG APRIL 1989 VOL. 5, NO. 4

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The problem with this manual is that really it is limited to those few that have to animate a practical class at, say, final year level. A fur- ther problem is that the schedule of experiments described here is rather inflexible and will have to be adopted in totality or not at all. As a result I doubt if this is des- tined to become a best-seller. Like all 'manual-type' books it is impos- sible to assess without having tried a few of the protocols. However the authors' reputation will be suf- ficient for most to accept the proto- cols blindly. As such, this is a rather unusual book.

Perhaps my biggest criticism is that it fails to place the experi- ments it describes in a wider con- text. Someone who relied on this as a real introduction would finish with a rather biased view of things: rather like learning cookery from an instruction manual for a microwave oven.

Thus the most crucial accompani- ment to this book is an enthusiastic instructor: in the end the success of this book will depend on how many of these rare animals choose to adopt the 20 module package presented here. My feeling, at least in the UK, is that there will not be too many.

STEVE BUSBY

School of Biochemistry, University of Birmingham. Birmingham B15 277~, UK.