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How Plants Live and Breathe The Physiology and Biochemistry of Plant Respiration. Edited by J. M. PALMER, Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. 195. €30. By J. 0. D. Coleman This book is a multi-author volume originating from a meeting of the Society of Experimental Biology held in December 1980. Often with this type of publication ‘the book is not as good as the meeting’. This is certainly not true in this case. Despite the inevitable variation of style, the overall standard of authorship is high, the articles are easy to read and are accessible to the target readership.

A general problem which crops up with meeting-derived publications is the lag time between date of meeting and date of publication. Although an effort has been made in this book to update some of the chapters, too much time was allowed to elapse before publication. This a fault but not a serious defect.

It has long been recognized that respiration has two central functions: firstly, as a means of releasing energy in a form which can be used to do work - both chemical and osmotic, and secondly, to provide the wide variety of chemical compounds required for syn- thetic reactions. As a consequence of this recognition, early studies on plant respiration proceeded along several lines and at different levels of organiza- tion. About 20-25 years ago things changed. The ready availability of preparative and analytical instruments meant that research on plant respiration became increasingly dominated by the reductionist approach. Work and conse- quently publications have centred on the properties of isolated mitochondria and concentrated on the mechanisms of energy release. The present and future challenge is to determine how respiration is regulated and integrated into the functioning of tissue, organ and whole plant. It is clear that such an under- standing cannot only be sought by in vitro investigations at the organellar level. In this respect this book is timely, as its stated central objective is to bring together research topics in the physi- ology and biochemistry of plant respir- ation.

The book is divided into two sections. Part I, The physiology of plant respira- tion and Part 11, The biochemistry of plant respiration. In my view a division along these is unnecessary and under-

mines the objective of the book. Each section contains a number of mini- reviews supported by shorter chapters on specialized topics. I found Part I to be the more interesting and the better of the two sections. Part I contains reviews which cover the respiration of plant growth (Ryle), seed inhibition (Simon), developing storage organs (Frenkel), aroid thermogenesis (Melase) and mor- phogenesis (van der Plas). The special- ized topics include anaerobic respiration and fl ood tolerance, the effect of Helmin- thosporim maydis T toxin and the influence of herbicides on mitochondria1 membrane fluidity. The reviews in Part I1 deal with glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway (ap Rees), TCA cycle (Mdler and Palmer), the respir- atory chain (Palmer), interactions between mitochondria and chloroplasts (Moore) and the coordination of and integration of metabolic pathways (Davies). All the reviews are well written and I particularly enjoyed Davies’s chapter. On the other hand, the sup- porting chapters on photorespiration and on cations and electron transport fail to produce any more information or any greater insight into these topics than the preceding reviews.

The book is well indexed, not over- referenced and the diagrams and figures are clearly presented. This volume is aimed at the advanced undergraduate and should have no difficulty in reaching its target audience.

J. 0. D. COLEMANisafrheDepartmenfof Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford O X i 3RA, UK

Vertebrate Development through a Glass Darkly The Epigenetic Nature of Early Chordate Development. By P. D. NIEUWKOOP, A. G. JOHNEN and B. ALBERS, 1985. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 373. €90, $69.50. By Jonathan Cooke We are experiencing challenge and change in developmental biology as in other branches of biology, produced by the new generation of techniques for detecting, isolating and characterizing the structure of comparatively rare pro- tein species in organisms and the nucleic acids that code for them. The possibility of embarking on this research pro-

gramme for the early stages of morpho- genesis means that any book based primarily on the vast body of earlier classical or ‘phenomenological’ know- ledge in embryogenesis begins with a disadvantage if it is to appeal to most currently active researchers. The diffi- culty reflects sociological facts about contemporary biology, as well as its particular intellectual climate. Thus to have in publishers’ terms, ‘market- penetrating power’, the book would need to meet several criteria. First, it should be so written that bleary-eyed gel-blotters, etc., can consume it during the interstices that occur in their experiments, rather than being laid out only for students who brood over ideas for months in libraries. Secondly, it should have set itself the task of sifting, from the deposit of ‘facts’ and crude biochemical correlations of the last 60 years, the lO-l5% that deserve con- tinued attention because they are com- mensurable with, and respectable in terms of, the sort of data that are now beginning to accumulate. Finally, to be in keeping with the ‘new’ aggressive climate, it would need a sanguine intellectual outlook. Science is ‘the art of the possible’ with big possibilities, indeed, just around the corner.

The first two of these criteria have more to do with the sociological facts of contemporary biology, the last one pertains to substance. To deal with the former first, I admit to having accepted the present book for review as someone who remains emotionally in the ‘old’ climate or style whilst recognizing the proper ascendancy of the ‘new’. I enjoy reading (and writing) relatively turgid stuff for hours on end, and am used to trying for months to deduce what the result of one particular, hopelessly crude experiment might mean about the organization of the embryo. I also admire greatly some of the principal author’s contributions, with his col- leagues, to the ‘old’; these are definitely in the crucial l0-15% bracket (whereas the particular ones of mine that he kindly refers to are, ironically, better forgotten). Nevertheless, I was only able to finish my reading assignment because it was that dark time of year where one needs a retreat from Christmas which doesn’t involve frank bodily withdrawal to the lab. ; a rather telling indictment as to the book’s style.

There has got to be-indeed there is - a method of referral to literature in text that is less thwarting to the reading

186 BioEssays Vol. 4, No. 4

BOOK REVIEWS

eye and brain than all those introns (or exons-it’s up to you) of names and dates. Moreover, the uncritical nature of the use made of the Hubrecht Laboratory’s incomparable literature collection might be deduced, given a good turn of reading speed and a reasonable short-term memory, even by novices with no opinions,of their own. Several instances exist of the same ‘finding’ by the same author being used to support divergent argument in ad- jacent chapters, and of opposing sets of evidence about a question being quoted in different places as parts of different ‘stories’. So the reader’s mind is drawn hither and thither in its natural wish for a framework of achieved understanding on which to hang all the information. Yet all this is interspersed with certain pronounced ‘views’ on the meaning of results that impinge on the authors’ own lifes’ work, these being invariably pre- faced with the tag ‘In our opinion. , , ’. One is left feeling ‘if only it were much slimmer but all one big Our Opinion, how relatively more useful and digestible it would be’ (e.g. J. M. W. Slack, From Egg to Embryo, a previous volume in this series).

But all substantial books deserve an appraisal of their message - the overall intellectual view of the subject revealed, mostly in the way the literature is reviewed but occasionally by explicit statement. Here, I fear, the book is also out of synch. with the times as much as it is in its style and presentation. By this I mean the following. Overall views or guesses about the nature of metazoan development form a continuum between two extremes. One extreme view is that a finite, small subset of the genome’s products is specifically concerned with carrying the morphogenetic signals and with mediating the uncommitted cells’ responses to these. The intellectual and technological challenge is simply (simply!) to find these molecules, as they are present relatively transiently and in low abundance in relation to most cell products studied so far. This view is pre-adapted to underlie an optimistic contemporary research programme, since the means for such searches are now at hand and there are even enticing clues that success has begun. Nieuwkoop and colleagues represent a view nearer the other extreme. This holds that evolution by its very nature, has ensured the reliability and constancy of develop- ments by arranging that a large and indefinite set of the ‘housekeeping’ processes and products of embryonic cells comprise, in effect, the spatial signals and the means of the specificity

of responses. Each egg ‘bootstraps’ itself into being an organized body by retracing ancestral pathways, which might use any cell products that happen to have been produced at one stage and position but not at others in some previous version of the system. Of course, moderate versions of these two guesses about development are not inconsistent with one another, but the second is profoundly pessimistic in its implications as to how soon, if ever, we might come to understand the whole process mechanistically. It is thus, at present, rejected by molecular biologists, who have relegated it to the wings. I cannot better convey its dispiriting message- to a young molecular re- searcher though plainly not to the authors or, necessarily, to myself - than to quote the prognosis in a final chapter as to what will be the key features of a future successful research programme in vertebrate development: ‘ . . . study of the rapidly changing structure and function of interacting embryonic sys- tems engaged in different pathways of cellular differentiation, on the one hand passing through separate phases of responsiveness (competence) and on the other hand producing various transient cellular products, that may act as inducing stimuli’.

Whether because it is about to be proved mistakenly pessimistic, or simply because ‘humankind cannot stand very much reality’, such a message is unlikely to endear the book to the workers who could have used a slimmer and more critical one.

JONATHAN COOKE is in the Laboratory of Embryogenesis, National Institute for Medical Research, The Ridgeway, Mill Hill, London NW7 I A A , UK.

The Molecular Genetics of Small Things Bacteria, Plasmids and Phages: An Introduction to Molecular Biology. By E. C . C. LIN, R. GOLDSTEIN and M. SYLVANEN. Harvard University Press, 1984. Pp. 316. €18.50 By David Sherratt This paperback is based on a set of lectures on bacteria and viruses designed to provide first-year students at Harvard Medical School with the background to pursue the study of human pathogens. It is not surprising then to find that the

book contains many relevant and interesting references to the molecular biology of bacterial pathogenicity. The book‘s preface states that a major aim of the book is to provide ‘a concise and balanced account of the molecular genetics of bacteria and their plasmids and phages. . .It is intended that the book may find itself as a useful text for upper-level college students who wish to be initiated to microbiology at the molecular level. ’

I feel that though the book achieves many of its aims of ‘introducing microbiology at the molecular level’, it should not be seen as a textbook of molecular biology or molecular genetics and cannot compete with the many excellent texts in molecular biology. As such it is likely to find itself an accessory student companion rather than a central or major text. The book‘s price is also likely to deter the student reader.

The book contains 13 chapters, each terminating with a set of useful and sometimes challenging questions, fol- lowed by an excellent list of further reading. Answers to the questions are provided at the end of the book. The first four chapters are very much an introduction to modern bacteriology. They deal with (1) the natural history of bacteria and their classification, (2) bacterial structure, (3) nutrition and physiology, (4) bacterial growth. From here the book shifts gear by going on to introduce gene expression and regula- tory mechanisms (chapter 5). The thirty- five pages of this chapter well illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the book. The content is wide-ranging, up to date and lucidly written. It deals with basic transcription and translation mechanisms, negative and positive tran- scriptional control (initially using lac and ara as examples), control in biosyn- thetic pathways, control by transcrip- tional termination and attenuation, catabolite repression, stringent-relaxed control of RNA synthesis, ammonium repression, respiratory and osmotic regulation, transcriptional control by DNA rearrangement, translational con- trol and post-translational processing, control of enzyme activity. As a sacrifice to conciseness, the text is inevitably un- critical, occasionally misleading or er- roneous and sometimes eccentric. For example, ‘Most promoters consist of a 7 base-pair sequence rich in AT’ is an unnecessary and erroneous oversimplifi- cation. Similarly, ‘A unit of DNA that is transcribed on to a single mRNA molecule is called an ‘operon’. An operon can code for one or more polypeptides. ’ Furthermore, what is the