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Synthetic peptides in biology and medicine
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Microcomputer Software Review Enzlab - - Elsevier Biosoft by J o h n G a r r a t t and P e t e r G r o v e s (1985), available for A p p l e II ( D O S 3.3), B B C M i c r o c o m p u t e r ( m o d e l B) a n d I B M PC. D i s t r i b u t e d by E l s e v i e r - B i o s o f t , 68 Hills R o a d , C a m b r i d g e CB2 1 L A , U K . This piece of software has been designed to simulate a laboratory situation where an active enzyme preparation and its substrate are available in limited quantities, but no information about K m or pH-optimum is available. The task is to select conditions suitable for finding out the values of Km and Vm~x and their dependence on pH. Time and enzyme run out, and lunch breaks are enforced. There is a choice of five enzyme types. After sufficient velocities have been measured, an iterative calculation can be done to find Km and Vm~x, but Lineweaver and Burk calculation (by unweighted linear regression) is also possible. (Despite being spelled correctly in the manual, Burk appears on the screen with a terminal 'e'.) I had the Apple II version to test. Operation was simple. However due to my misreading the screen and not having taken the time to study the manual thoroughly, I chose to use too little enzyme and got no further than T O O S L O W repeatedly for my initial velocity determinations. I realised what was wrong only when I found I seemed to have an inexhaustable supply of enzyme! My impression is that if you have done a lot of enzyme purification and assays, you have a feeling for what is going on and know what a sensible concentration or pH is to choose for starters, but if you have never done the real experiments, how can you attempt the simulation? Perhaps this is what the package will teach. It is a masterpiece of ingenuity for reproducing the restrictions of a limited supply of enzyme and laboratory hours, but it is difficult to know how well it would work as a teaching aid. Verdict, technically impeccable, but requires evaluation with a class of (real) students in order to arrive at a recommendation. D G Herries
Book Reviews Textbook of Clinical Chemistry E d i t e d by N W Tietz. p p 1919. W B S a u n d e r s , P h i l a d e l phia. 1986 ISBN 0-7216-8886-1 Clinical chemistry has made very extensive advances in the last three decades as a result of the incorporation into its practice of many newly developed techniques and instruments. This book, to which nearly seventy persons contributed material, is eloquent testimony to the growth of this specialty. It should find wide acceptance as a teaching text for medical laboratory technologists, and as a resource text for clinical chemists, diagnostic laboratory personnel, pathologists and other physicians, and amongst instructors and researchers interested in pathophysiology. About a third of the book is dedicated to laboratory principles and instrumentation (this includes electrochemistry, gas chromatography, HPLC, radioactivity, mass spectrometry, immunochemistry, and automation), the acquisition, management and application of laboratory data (this includes statistical procedures, reference values, method evaluation, quality assurance, microprocessors, and computers), and specimen collecting and processing. The rest is concerned with the application of laboratory information in patient evaluation and care. This
BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 14(3) 1986
comprises sixteen chapters devoted to amino acids, proteins, enzymes, carbohydrates, lipids, nutrition, various body systems (including hormonal, respiratory, renal, skeletal, hepatic, gastrointestinal, and blood), drug monitoring, toxic substances, and biochemical aspects of pregnancy. The final chapter consists of a series of twenty-six tables, of which the most extensive (some 40 pages) is that on reference ranges for clinical chemistry and toxicology. The pathophysiology part of the book maintains a very good balance between basic biochemistry and pathophysiological processes, methods for analysis or assay of selected specific analytes or enzymes (about two hundred in all), and the application of chemical laboratory tests in medical diagnosis or monitoring of disease processes. Clear and direct writing, numerous tables and line drawings, end-of-chapter lists of references mostly to publications which appeared within the last decade, and a good index should make the book popular with students and workers in the clinical chemistry field, and with students, teachers and researchers whose interest is in chemical pathophysiology. F Vella
Synthetic Peptides in Biology and Medicine E d i t e d by K A l i t a l o , P P a r t a n e n a n d A V a h e r i . p p 256. E l s e v i e r Science P u b l i s h e r s , A m s t e r d a m , N e w Y o r k , O x f o r d . 1985. $59.25 ISBN 0-444-80753-5 This volume contains 23 papers (in camera-ready copy form) presented at a Research Symposium organised by Labsystems in H/~meenlinna, Finland, in June 1985. This meeting brought together a group of experts from different disciplines, some of whom were orientated towards certain aspects of the methodology, such as the prediction of protein structure, peptide chemistry, and the generation of polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies. But, more interesting to the general reader, were others who had applied the methods (all depending on the availability of synthetic peptides) to a great variety of problems in microbiology, virology and cell biology. Until about ten years ago, the only way to raise a specific antibody was laboriously to purify the antigen and to leave the rest to the experimental animal. Two advances have changed all this: the first was the introduction by K6hler and Milstein of hybridoma methodology, the second was Richard Lerner's observation that antibodies raised to peptide fragments of a protein could still recognise the parent molecule. The relative ease by which recombinant DNA methods can predict amino acid sequences of proteins, and the recent improvements in the techniques of automated peptide synthesis, now make it possible to generate useful antibodies to proteins never previously isolated and of undetermined function. In the papers reported here, those describing these applications are among the most interesting. One by G I Evan, D C Hancock, T Littlewood and C D Pauza exemplifies the approach in relation to the product of the human c-rnyc oncogene. They constructed a number of synthetic peptides using the cDNA sequence information and generated polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies to the peptides. These antibodies led to the recognition of a 62 kDa protein, located in nuclei and common to all the human cell lines examined. Amongst the various applications of the antibodies generated to this protein was the visualization of a lung carcinoma by means of a gamma-camera after administration of a 131I-labelled monoclonal antibody. In view of the speed of development of this methodology and its far-reaching possibilities, this book is timely and gives the general reader a very useful and up-to-date idea of what can be achieved by using synthetic peptides. John Kenny
Microcomputer Software Review Enzlab - - Elsevier Biosoft by J o h n G a r r a t t and P e t e r G r o v e s (1985), available for A p p l e II ( D O S 3.3), B B C M i c r o c o m p u t e r ( m o d e l B) a n d I B M PC. D i s t r i b u t e d by E l s e v i e r - B i o s o f t , 68 Hills R o a d , C a m b r i d g e CB2 1 L A , U K . This piece of software has been designed to simulate a laboratory situation where an active enzyme preparation and its substrate are available in limited quantities, but no information about K m or pH-optimum is available. The task is to select conditions suitable for finding out the values of Km and Vm~x and their dependence on pH. Time and enzyme run out, and lunch breaks are enforced. There is a choice of five enzyme types. After sufficient velocities have been measured, an iterative calculation can be done to find Km and Vm~x, but Lineweaver and Burk calculation (by unweighted linear regression) is also possible. (Despite being spelled correctly in the manual, Burk appears on the screen with a terminal 'e'.) I had the Apple II version to test. Operation was simple. However due to my misreading the screen and not having taken the time to study the manual thoroughly, I chose to use too little enzyme and got no further than T O O S L O W repeatedly for my initial velocity determinations. I realised what was wrong only when I found I seemed to have an inexhaustable supply of enzyme! My impression is that if you have done a lot of enzyme purification and assays, you have a feeling for what is going on and know what a sensible concentration or pH is to choose for starters, but if you have never done the real experiments, how can you attempt the simulation? Perhaps this is what the package will teach. It is a masterpiece of ingenuity for reproducing the restrictions of a limited supply of enzyme and laboratory hours, but it is difficult to know how well it would work as a teaching aid. Verdict, technically impeccable, but requires evaluation with a class of (real) students in order to arrive at a recommendation. D G Herries
Book Reviews Textbook of Clinical Chemistry E d i t e d by N W Tietz. p p 1919. W B S a u n d e r s , P h i l a d e l phia. 1986 ISBN 0-7216-8886-1 Clinical chemistry has made very extensive advances in the last three decades as a result of the incorporation into its practice of many newly developed techniques and instruments. This book, to which nearly seventy persons contributed material, is eloquent testimony to the growth of this specialty. It should find wide acceptance as a teaching text for medical laboratory technologists, and as a resource text for clinical chemists, diagnostic laboratory personnel, pathologists and other physicians, and amongst instructors and researchers interested in pathophysiology. About a third of the book is dedicated to laboratory principles and instrumentation (this includes electrochemistry, gas chromatography, HPLC, radioactivity, mass spectrometry, immunochemistry, and automation), the acquisition, management and application of laboratory data (this includes statistical procedures, reference values, method evaluation, quality assurance, microprocessors, and computers), and specimen collecting and processing. The rest is concerned with the application of laboratory information in patient evaluation and care. This
BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION 14(3) 1986
comprises sixteen chapters devoted to amino acids, proteins, enzymes, carbohydrates, lipids, nutrition, various body systems (including hormonal, respiratory, renal, skeletal, hepatic, gastrointestinal, and blood), drug monitoring, toxic substances, and biochemical aspects of pregnancy. The final chapter consists of a series of twenty-six tables, of which the most extensive (some 40 pages) is that on reference ranges for clinical chemistry and toxicology. The pathophysiology part of the book maintains a very good balance between basic biochemistry and pathophysiological processes, methods for analysis or assay of selected specific analytes or enzymes (about two hundred in all), and the application of chemical laboratory tests in medical diagnosis or monitoring of disease processes. Clear and direct writing, numerous tables and line drawings, end-of-chapter lists of references mostly to publications which appeared within the last decade, and a good index should make the book popular with students and workers in the clinical chemistry field, and with students, teachers and researchers whose interest is in chemical pathophysiology. F Vella
Synthetic Peptides in Biology and Medicine E d i t e d by K A l i t a l o , P P a r t a n e n a n d A V a h e r i . p p 256. E l s e v i e r Science P u b l i s h e r s , A m s t e r d a m , N e w Y o r k , O x f o r d . 1985. $59.25 ISBN 0-444-80753-5 This volume contains 23 papers (in camera-ready copy form) presented at a Research Symposium organised by Labsystems in H/~meenlinna, Finland, in June 1985. This meeting brought together a group of experts from different disciplines, some of whom were orientated towards certain aspects of the methodology, such as the prediction of protein structure, peptide chemistry, and the generation of polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies. But, more interesting to the general reader, were others who had applied the methods (all depending on the availability of synthetic peptides) to a great variety of problems in microbiology, virology and cell biology. Until about ten years ago, the only way to raise a specific antibody was laboriously to purify the antigen and to leave the rest to the experimental animal. Two advances have changed all this: the first was the introduction by K6hler and Milstein of hybridoma methodology, the second was Richard Lerner's observation that antibodies raised to peptide fragments of a protein could still recognise the parent molecule. The relative ease by which recombinant DNA methods can predict amino acid sequences of proteins, and the recent improvements in the techniques of automated peptide synthesis, now make it possible to generate useful antibodies to proteins never previously isolated and of undetermined function. In the papers reported here, those describing these applications are among the most interesting. One by G I Evan, D C Hancock, T Littlewood and C D Pauza exemplifies the approach in relation to the product of the human c-rnyc oncogene. They constructed a number of synthetic peptides using the cDNA sequence information and generated polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies to the peptides. These antibodies led to the recognition of a 62 kDa protein, located in nuclei and common to all the human cell lines examined. Amongst the various applications of the antibodies generated to this protein was the visualization of a lung carcinoma by means of a gamma-camera after administration of a 131I-labelled monoclonal antibody. In view of the speed of development of this methodology and its far-reaching possibilities, this book is timely and gives the general reader a very useful and up-to-date idea of what can be achieved by using synthetic peptides. John Kenny