A Passion for Science

239 Most of the twelve chapters focus on information and advice for students aspiring to, or beginning, a doctoral program. These deal with such topics as the characteristics of the doctoral process; a variety of psychological aspects; the supervisor's role from the perspective of the student, the supervisor him(her)self, and the academic community; how research is carried out; what professionalism means, etc. Four chapters focus more specifically on matters of major interest to universities and the administrators of their doctoral programs and deal with the nature of the PhD qualification, the PhD process, how to supervise doctoral candidates, and the limitations of the present system. The transition from a state of intellectual dependence and immaturity in academic research, to that of independence and acceptance as a competent researcher, that the PhD process entails, is often traumatic and difficult for candidates and also for their supervisors. Much unlearning and rethinking of previously acquired doctrines and ways of proceeding must occur on the part of candidates, while supervisors may have very little experience or insight into their roles and responsibilities. Because of this the book is recommended highly both to university faculty members who want to clarify their positions on this matter, and to aspiring or actual graduate students who have not yet reached the point-of-no-return in the process. Graduate students who read the book and intend to follow its advice could also ensure that their research supervisors do the same. Both could save themselves unnecessary pain and such problems as may arise from their not having a common understanding of the doctoral training process. F Vella

Biochemistry Illustrated (Second Edition) by P N C a m p b e l l a n d A D Smith. p p 288. Churchill L i v i n g s t o n e , E d i n b u r g h . 1988. £12.50 ISBN 0-443-03454-0

Biochemistry Illustrated by Peter Campbell and Anthony Smith needs no introduction as a masterful exposition of biochemical knowledge, modestly sub-titled ' A n illustrated summary of the subject for medical and other students of biochemistry'. The graphic and telegraphic (why not?) style of the book is unique, amounting to inspired brief comment facing annotated chemical formulae, line drawings and some photographic plates. The amount of biochemistry covered with unflagging enthusiasm in nine sections is truly enormous, ranging over the cellular basis of biochemistry, proteins, structure and function of enzymes, nucleic acids and protein synthesis, co-enzymes and watersoluble vitamins, carbohydrate chemistry and interconversions of monosaccharides, nitrogen metabolism, carbohydrate and fat metabolism, and membrane structure and function. Most of the material is indexed. Few of us, whether students or teachers of biochemistry, have so much knowledge at their fingertips. Fewer still can promptly produce the thumbnail sketches which are the hallmark of the book. I expect that many like myself will be grateful to Peter Campbell and Anthony Smith for giving us this multum in parvo manual of biochemistry. I shall be using it, very often and recommending it to students. I have no serious criticism of the book even though it skips certain antioxidant defence mechanisms such as superoxide dismutase: oxygen freeradicals are mentioned (under vitamin E) but are not indexed. The book is aimed at students 'primarily interested in animals'. Even so, a section on the biochemistry of photosynthesis would not be out of place: 'All life depends on the utilization of energy emitted by the sun' (page 162)! W H Bannister

BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 16(4) 1988

A Passion for Science by L e w i s W o l p e r t a n d A l i s o n R i c h a r d s . p p 206. O x f o r d U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , O x f o r d . 1988. £15 I S B N 0 - 1 9 - 8 5 4 2 1 3 - 5 This volume comprises a series of interviews with 13 scientists, originally broadcast on the BBC's Radio 3. It starts with an Introduction which sets out to explain the aims of the interviews. In this it is claimed that scientists are 'usually seen as humourless talking heads. Logico-deductive and cold, they are allowed to discourse on their findings in the well defined 'slots' allotted to science broadcasting'. The objective then is to allow the scientists to talk back and reveal the human face of science. Wolpert also states that ' . . . their (the scientists') mental processes are perceived to operate in a manner quite other than those of normal people'. Wolpert claims that this is largely untrue. He supports this belief not only from his own experience as a scientist but also from the answers he got in the interviews. He says that 'doing science has a great deal in common with other kinds of intellectual and creative activity'. Before each interview there is a short piece mentioning the achievements of the interviewee and setting the scene for the first question. I had hoped to gain more understanding of the activities of the physical scientists who make up the first section entitled 'First and Last Things' but in general I failed. There were two points I picked up from Christopher Zeeman, the mathematician. First, his answer to the question: "Can mathematicians in quite different fields talk to one another?" The answer was "No, no, absolutely not." Second, in a discussion on the differences between mathematics and science, Zeeman says: "The scientist has to take 95% of his subject on t r u s t . . , whereas a mathematician doesn't have to take anything on trust. Any theorem that's proved, he doesn't believe it, really, until he goes through the proof himself, and therefore he knows his whole subject from scratch." Although the aims of the series must surely be applauded, I do not intend to discuss the extent to which they are met. Rather I will summarise my thoughts as a biochemist since this is more in keeping with Biochemical Education. I certainly found much to enjoy in the book, especially, and perhaps not surprisingly, in the second section entitled 'Molecules of Life'. The modesty of Dorothy Hodgkin comes over well and is both genuine and attractive. Her personal account of how she got into X-ray crystallography is fascinating as is her response to the question "Have you felt strongly about the position of women in science?" She replies "No, I think it's because I didn't really notice it very much." and then goes on to claim that there are clear advantages in being a lone girl. Francis Crick's chapter entitled 'Just Gossiping' recalled many occasions when I have been a privileged participant. Gunther Stent's interview was valuable in that Wolpert was able to probe his unusual views on the future of science. The interview with Sydney Brenner was for me a disappointment and I found the introduction somewhat out of focus. Moreover, I was surprised by his castigation of the biochemists in the late 1950s. If it was true that biochemists were deflected from the problem of the ordering of the amino acids in protein synthesis by the origin of the energy, why was it that Sydney's lectures were so well attended whenever he emerged from Cambridge, not to mention the enormous enthusiasm for Fred Sanger's work. Could it be that Sydney was too much affected by some Cambridge biochemists? Two other sections are 'Evolving Ideas' which include intriguing interviews with John Maynard Smith and Stephen Jay Gould. In both cases the human qualities were finely displayed. In 'The Search' Anthony Epstein describes the discovery of the Epstein-Barr virus. He rightly pays tribute to his hero George Palade. I was slightly disappointed that he did not mention that the virus was isolated in my centrifuge. I was truly grateful that

240 we were so often able to converse over the Beckman since in this way I learnt my cell biology and even wrote a little book as a result. The interview with Walter Bodmer, in the same section, covers broader matters such as the validity of the opinions of scientists on matters outside their own expertise. As you see, I think it's a good read if you have £15. P N Campbell

Biochemistry. A Review with Questions and Explanations (Third Edition) by Paul Jay Friedman. pp 226. Little, B r o w n and C o m p a n y , B o s t o n / T o r o n t o . 1987. £9.95 ISBN 0-316-29374-1 This work is a review of medical biochemistry; it is not in itself a complete textbook. In order to function effectively as a review it should accurately summarize the content of a typical modern medical biochemistry course, and ideally it should organize the material in a manner designed to facilitate re-learning and retention for licensure examinations, etc. In my view the book falls short on both counts. The most striking failure is in the nucleic acids/molecular biology content. Polynucleotide structure is treated in three pages; replication, transcription and translation get ten pages, of which eight are devoted to the genetic code and translation. These thirteen pages comprise six percent of the book; recent medical licensure examinations popular in North America devote about one quarter of their questions to nucleic acids/ molecular biology. Other noteworthy areas of weakness include the areas of membranes and receptors, lipoprotein interrelations, metabolic interrelationships and neuropeptides. This situation reflects not space limitations as much as an overall oldfashioned view of biochemistry, and consequently, an inappropriate balancing of space allocation. Vitamins and coenzymes get 16 pages; mono- and disaccharide structures are given five; a problem on recognition of purines and pyrimidines among other ring structures takes up a whole page. The book does, however, devote reasonable space to clinically relevant topics such as gas transport, pH regulation and heme degradation. The book presents biochemical information in a simple, uncluttered manner, often simplified to the point of error: In contrast [to fibrous proteins], the globular proteins are spherical and water-soluble, and they consist mainly of random coils with occasional stretches of a-helices. Many other errors do not appear to be attempts to simplify; they seem to reflect imprecise use of language or misunderstanding of the point. For example: Glycogen phosphorylase in human tissues removes glucose from tissue glycogen by phosphorylation to glucose-l-phospate. Anaerobic tissues, such as exercising muscle or, in cases of coronary-artery disease, an inadequately perfused myocardium, cannot utilize the TCA cycle or oxidative phosphorylation. There are two hydrogen-electron carriers in oxidative phosphorylation that contain non-heine, [sic] iron proteins. Their iron atoms bind directly to the enzyme without requiring a porphyrin ring. These carriers are succinate dehydrogenase and N A D H dehydrogenase. CO 2 q.- H20 ~ H2CO 3

pK~ = 6.1 ~ H + + HCO~

The glass of the bottle, on the other hand, has a rigid crystalline structure.

BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 16(4) 1988

The overall organization of material in this book is that of a traditional biochemistry course of the mid 1960s, with early chapters on amino acid, carbohydrate, etc structure; enzymes and energetics. Chapters on metabolism begin halfway through the book. Topics sometimes appear at locations which are not readily predictable and which tend to interrupt the flow, eg heme degradation in the chapter on the tricarboxylic acid cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. There appears to have been no attempt, other than elimination of detail, to arrange the material in a manner appropriate to the task of a student who is reviewing the topic. Questions with answers and explanations take up a large fraction of the space. Most of these are of the one best answer type or the matching type. Notable exceptions occur in the sections on pH and energetics, which contain problems requiring calculation. There are no examples of the more complicated multiple choice question format found, for example, in the National Board of Medical Examiners Part I examination. By and large the question content is quite simple, a useful property if one's goal is building confidence. It would, however, be a serious error to assume that these questions reflect the degree of difficulty to be expected in licensure examinations. In keeping with their simplicity, many of the questions do not have (and do not need) explanations. In summary, I feel the book is seriously flawed, and I cannot recommend it. Conversations with medical students at my institution suggest that the previous edition has been quite popular with its intended audience. Evidently the simplification of the material is compelling; if the text could be corrected, the content brought into modern times and the quality of the questions enhanced the book would be valuable. James Baggott

Biochemistry (Second Edition) by G e o f f r e y Z u b a y . pp 1226. Macmillan Publishing, Basingstoke, U K . 1988. £22 ISBN 0-02-432080-3 The earliest impression I formed during the first stages of evaluating this book was that it was very different from the First Edition which was published four years previously. In this I was influenced by: (i) the new outer appearance; (ii) the change of publisher; (iii) the larger format, although the number of pages is essentially the same; (iv) the use of a bold purple for highlighting of headings, etc, rather than the more sedate, rustybrown of the former edition; (v) the presence of a glossary, and of answers to end-of-chapter problems; (vi) the organisation into six parts (comprising 36 chapters), rather than five parts (comprising 32 chapters). My mature impression is that the book is more uniformly readable, much better integrated, more balanced in style, approach and coverage than its predecessor. This is very likely a reflection of the involvement of the coordinating author in almost one-half of the chapters, and of the part played by a good editorial assistant in the book's production. Its release coincided with that of the Third Edition of Stryer's textbook, making comparison almost inevitable. The content of the two books is rather similar though the extent of coverage naturally varies. Zubay's book comes out as containing much more metabolism than Stryer's and in this may have a slightly wider appeal amongst those who believe that metabolism, though difficult, is important. This book should find increasing acceptance as a basic textbook especially for undergraduate students majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology, and for graduate students doing research in this or in related disciplines. F Vella