General genetics

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plete and current and illustrates the enormous power of this approach for somatic cell geneticists. Unlike earlier sections of the book, this section is quite detailed, with ample references to the recent literature. The final chapter presents information about the genetics of teratocarcinoma cells, an interest of the author's which provides an example of how modern somatic cell genetics can be used to study differentiation. This chapter is well-presented, and may convert many developmental biologists who have not been convinced of the use of the teratocarcinoma system. There is enormous promise in this book that, as in the molecular biology of prokaryotic and simple eukaryotic organisms, the application of the prin-

ciples of genetics will help to unravel the secrets of mammalian cell biology. There are also pitfalls which the author makes clear to his reader. How do we know that cultured mammalian cells are an accurate mirror of the processes which occur in an intact animal? The microinjection into mouse oocytes of mutant mammalian genes which result in known phenotypes in tissue culture may provide an answer to this question. This approach may also lead to animal models of known genetic diseases. Homologous recombination between isolated genes and chromosomal genes would make it possible to replace host genes with isolated genes. Although homologous recombination is at present impossible to achieve in somatic cells,

Molecular Cell Genetics Section, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.

G e n e r a l Genetics

be used to accompany a one-term course. Its 16 chapters cover topics from Mendelian genetics through chromosome structure and behaviour, D N A structure and replication, bacterial and viral genetics, gene expression and genetic engineering, to population gentics and evolution. Each chapter has been written by one of the authors and then revised by the other two. The resuiting specialist/non-specialist teamwork is perhaps the only good way of covering such a broad subject; it avoids the imbalance frequently encountered in texts by only one author and lends a coherence that is seriously lacking in many books where a single person has simply collated a number of uncoordinated contributions. This does not mean that the book must be used in its entirety or not at all. Many of the chapters can be read on their own and presuppose only a general knowledge of the foregoing material, to which adequate reference is made where necessary. The book has many points that commend it. Its didactic value is increased considerably by a generous number of (mostly two-tone) diagrams and by the use of bold-face type when technical terms are introduced or defined. A separate, alphabetical glossary of some 700 of these is included. The text is on the whole clear and easy to follow, with only rare lapses into Newspeak (e.g., 'All data have not been supportive'). Each chapter is followed by some 20 easy-to-middling problems; brief answers to these and a bibliography are also given. It is impossible to deal with such a broad subject in 600 pages without covering many topics extremely thinly. Precisely where the shortfall occurs is

perhaps a matter of personal taste (or research interest), but the fact that two colleagues and I all found passages that we considered excessively sparse does suggest a general deficiency. One can argue that to have annoyed everybody equally indicates achievement of the fight balance, but I wonder whether the fault does not really lie in the authors' self-imposed goal of extreme brevity. Should one try to compress 'general' genetics into a one-term programme? What would a comparable crash-course in 'general mathematics' or 'general chemistry' be like? Granted the limitations imposed by brevity, the book's most serious flaws lie in its distressingly high incidence of careless mistakes and confusing passages. It would normally be captious to complain about these, but a student trying to master new material should surely not have to be distracted by, for example, the confusion of cis and trans heterozygotes in the defining of new notation (p. 65), by a wrong statement segregating alleles (p. 90) or by downright howlers such as a fruitful female × female cross (p. 66). It is misleadingly implied that the activity of suppressor tRNA lies only in a changed anticodon (p. 387); some bacterial mutations and human disease syndromes are subjected to genetic analysis without an accompanying statement of what phenotypes they represent; in spite of its fundamental importance, the section describing meiosis is unclear and relies heavily on an illustration (p. 35), while that on tetrad analysis appeared (to more than one reader) incomprehensible. These and others are defects which weaken the authors' claim of thorough critical reading, and which mar an introductory textbook.

by Leon A. Snyder, David Freifelder and Daniel L. Hartl, Jones and Bartlett, 1985, $26.00 (xiv + 666 pages) ISBN 0 867 20050 2 Study Guide and Solutions Manual for Students by David Freifelder, Jones and Bartlett, 1985. $7.00 (v + 233 pages) I S B N 0 867 20054 5 Instructor's S u p p l e m e n t by David Freifelder, Jones and Bartlett, 1985. Gratis, available on request. (168 pages) I S B N 0 867 200537 'What', I once naively asked an undergraduate friend, 'do geographers actually do?' 'Everything', he replied. Today, the same may well be said of geneticists, whose territory in the broadest sense now encompasses large areas of thermodynamics; information theory; organic chemistry; molecular, cell and sociobiology; behavioural psychology; quite apart from the sprawling terrain loosely called 'classical genetics', and frequent incursions into the rather unfriendly hinterland of statistics. It may therefore be surmised that the writing of a modern introductory text whose contents live up to the title General Genetics is no light matter. However, Synder, Freifelder and Hartl have combined their resources and have mastered the task with considerable, though not complete, success. General Genetics is intended as an introduction to the principles of genetics, based on the demand for a book that can

such events may become routine in the future as we learn more about the enzyme systems which mediate recombination. Martin Hooper's Mammalian Cell Genetics is the best introduction currently available for a student of somatic cell genetics. It should also provide entertaining and enlightening reading for the aficionado who is not entirely up-to-date, or who would like to brush up on the classics. M I C H A E L M. G O T T I E S M A N

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General Genetics is accompanied by a Study Guide and Solutions Manual for Students and by an Instructor's Supplement. The study guide should be valuable for anyone working systematically through one or more chapters. It contains for each chapter: a two-page summary; a check-list of terms defined; a chatty section containing additional information; some basic 'drill questions', problems, and answers to both; and solutions, worked out in detail, to the problems in the main book. It is unfortunate that the study guide - apparently prepared in a hurry - should contain a

generous sprinkling of non-trivial misprints and some wrong answers. The latter occur at a rate of about one per chapter: while this might serve to teach a good student independence of mind as well as genetics, it could cause a complete beginner to flounder. Further, a randomly-selected chapter showed three out of 26 answers to be copied from the main book into the study guide, with no additional working. The instructor's supplement contains an expanded list of contents and (yet) more problems. I am not sure how an instructor is supposed to use it: the prob-

Plant organization for students An Introduction Development

to

Plant

Cell

by Jeremy Burgess, Cambridge University Press, 1985. £27.50) (hbk)/ £9.95 (pbk) (viii + 264 pages) ISBN 0 521 31611 1 The author is an internationally recognized cell biologist and it is therefore not particularly surprising that he has deliberately chosen to write a text on plant development from a cellular aspect. There are very few good books on plant development available to junior undergraduates and the entry into the arena of a new text is to be welcomed strongly. Plants for the most parts are multicellular individuals with a high degree of differentiation and division of labour. Such multicellular individuals are frequently described as organized, integrated structures without giving sufficient thought to what is meant by 'organized' (a word used so freely but so poorly understood). In this book Dr Burgess attempts to show how plants are built up of cells into a composite structure in which the functioning and behaviour of the individual cells becomes modified as they interact with one another. Plant development cannot be viewed or presented solely from a functional standpoint as so much of the understanding of the progression of changes which take place from the zygote to the fully mature reproductive individual is dependent on a detailed knowledge of basic structure, not only of the individuals cells but also of tissues and organs. Dr Burgess adopts such an approach, spending the first few chapters examining the cell and its inclusions together with the process of division, progressing smoothly and

logically to a consideration of the differentiation and specialization of cells within tissues and organs. Thus prepared he turns his attention towards hormones and cell differentiation, finally examining and discussing organization in the intact plant and the regulation of development. While he deals efficiently with a selection of phenomena and begins to prepare the way to an understanding of what organization means he fails to help the reader through the dilemma and on p.183 makes a comment which restates the central problem but does not help to clarify it: 'What is clear from a consideration of whole-plant physiology is that the behaviour of a cell or a group of cells is determined by a multitude of influences, not merely by chemical signalling'. This could, I fear, be interpreted as an admission of de-

lems could have been added to the study guide, and the main book is so well laid out as to make the expanded contents list superfluous. General Genetics can be recommended as parallel reading for an introduction course in genetics. The study guide is likewise commended, warts and all. Those who consider using the instructor's supplement should take a look at if first. PAUL WOOLLEY

Kemisk Institute, ftarhus Universitet, .Ztarhus, Denmark.

feat in what is otherwise such a good text. In 1985 (when the book was published) it should be possible to get a little closer to what determines patterns and organization in the whole plant. Indeed the author's lack of attention to chemical signalling (no mention of signalling, chemical or otherwise, or to related topics in the index or glossary or contents) which he relegates to a subservient role to the 'multitude of influences' is, in my view, mistaken and should be rectified in later editions. Chemical signalling, or molecular conversations between cells may not prove to be the panacea to our understanding of development but they are at present our best hope! M.M. YEOMAN

Department of Botany, The University of Edinburgh, The King's Buildings, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JH, UK.

Butterflies to Folates and Pterins. Vol. 2 Chemistry and Biochemistry of Pterins edited by Raymond L. Blakley and Stephen J. Benkovic, John Wiley & Sons, 1985. £103.50 (xiii + 414 pages) 1SBN 0 471 89121 5 This book is the second of a proposed three-volume series describing recent progress in folate and pterin biochemistry. Dr Blakley's previous book on this subject became an authoritative reference manual for research workers in this area and his association with Dr Benkovic to produce this new and more extensive series covering this topic will be a welcome addition to pteridine literature. That pteridines in biochemistry alone can now provide the contents of a

brains

complete volume in this series demonstrates their biological importance and allows their identity to be established separately from their previously dominating folate counterparts. The volume describes pteridine occurrence, chemistry, biosynthesis and catabolism and focuses in depth on the three aromatic amino acid hydroxylases phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan, and on pteridine reductase. This area of pteridine biochemistry has in the past two decades been a main focus of intensive research. The book ends with a brief analysis of unusual but fascinating pteridines, such as those containing sulfur, present as cofactors in certain molybdoenzymes, the methanogens and those required for glycerol ether cleavage. Each chapter has been written by a