Techniques in the Life Sciences: Biochemistry Section

28 In all the above acidic protonation cases the ring nitrogens are more basic (have higher pKa values) than the exocyclic amino groups mainly because of the electron-withdrawing effects of the ring nitrogen and the aromatic ring. The preferred protonation of tautomers also reflect the differences in electron densities of the different nitrogens with respect to other atoms and themselves. The substituted thiazolium ring of TPP, being aromatic, has the positive charge distributed, albeit unequally, among all the fivemembered ring atoms; only when the C' (2)-H is broken that the C' (2) becomes negatively charged. For more information readers should consult appropriate sections in references given below.

Department of Biochemistry Mahidol University Bangkok, Thailand

Bhinyo Panijpan

References 1Watson, J D (1978) 'The Double Helix', Weidenfeldand Nicolson, London

Nucleicacidbases 2Pullman, A and Pullman, B (1971) Adv HeterocyclChem 13, 77-159 3Kwiatkowski, J S and Pullman, B (1975) Adv HeterocyclChem 18,199--335 4Elguero, J, Marzin, C, Katritzky, A R, and Linda, P (1976) 'The Tautomerism of Heterocycles', Supplement 1,156-161 and 513-525. AcademicPress, New York Thiamine SAcheson, K M (1976) 'An Introduction to the Chemistry of Heterocyclic Compounds', 3rd edn, 378-384. Wiley, New York eZugr~vescu, l and Petrovann, M (1976) 'N-Ylid Chemistry', 117-135. McGrawHill, New York 7Panijpan, B October (1979)J Chem Educ (in press). Folioacid 8(ref4), 164-165 9(ref 5), 429-433 Histidine, histamineand others l°(ref 4), 20"-'27and 278-281 11(ref 5), 354-367 Po~hyrins 12(ref 4), 566- 567 Chloroquineand quinacrine 13Albert, A (1959) 'Heterocyclic Chemistry', 47-48 and 343-346. Athlone Press, London Pyridoxal andpyridoxamine t4(ref 5), 278-281 lS(ref4), 85 and 103-105

BOOK REVIEWS Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics by Athel Cornish-Bowden. pp 230. Butterworths, London. 1979. £8.50 In the preface one is told that the author intended this book to be an abridged version of his 'Principles of Enzyme Kinetics' (reviewed in Biochemical Education 4, p 6, April 1976) but as a result of expanding the practical aspects of the subject and adding a problems section to each chapter, it grew to-a few pages longer. The price however has dropped by 30 per cent, presumably because the publishers feel, rightly or wrongly, that undergraduates (at whom the book is aimed) buy cheaper books than research students (at whom 'Principles' was aimed). The chapter headings are largely the same as before, covering chemical kinetics, derivation of steady-state rate equations, inhibitors and activators, two-substrate reactions, pH and temperature effects, control, fast reactions, and the estimation of kinetic constants. An early chapter on practical considerations (enzyme purification, assay, etc) replaces a later one on the analysis of progress curves, and the material on statistical aspects of estimating the kinetic constants has been somewhat shortened. It is easy to find diagrams and large sections of text are the same in both books, and it would not seem necessary to buy 'Fundamentals' if one already had 'Principles'. However, there is every reason to recommend this book to new readers, as it carries on the clarity of style and other qualities noted when reviewing the previous book. D G Herries

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Techniques in the Life Sciences: Biochemistry Section Edited by H L Kornberg, J C Metcalfe, D H Northcote, C I Pogson, and K F Tipton. Elsevier/North-Holland. 1979. The format of this series is a collection of reprint-sized booklets, each devoted to a particular group of techniques or area (eg 'Protein purification', 'Determination of the subunit structure of proteins', etc), which fit into an attractive plastic case. The aim is to produce an everlasting book: sections can be up-dated individually as techniques change and develop, and new sections can be added. It has to be admitted that regular books on techniques do grow out of date at an exponential rate, but it remains to be seen whether the present system is the answer to this problem. I have no doubt that someone will have stolen the particular section you wanted to look at by the time you get around to looking at this collection. Also the little booklets themselves are not all that durable and I suspect would quickly become dog-eared after use at the bench for a period (but NB one plastic cover is provided). The whole compendium is provided with a separate index which refers one to a page number in a particular booklet for a given topic. The booklets themselves are coded: eg the section 'The purity of proteins' is in BiochemistryVolume BI/I, B103. The cover of the booklet however, gives only the code number: it is necessary to look either at the card in the plastic folder or to the index to find the section one wants. No doubt one would get used to this if the system is in regular use in the lab. It is stated that the editorial board will review the basic material each year and that this will result in the issue of supplements to cover emerging techniques considered to be of major importance. The series is sold on a subscription basis and the biochemistry section will consist of seven volumes appearing over a two-year period and comprising about 2500 pages. The present subscription price (1978/79) is $70 per instalment of 500 pages including postage. Subscribers are automatically sent supplementary material. Vol B1/I Techniques in Protein and Enzyme Biochemistry -- Part I This collection deals with protein purification, affinity chromatography, protein concentration determination and protein purity criteria, molecular weight and subunit structure determination, spectroscopic methods including IR, gaman, EPR and NMR as well as absorption, C D / O R D , and fluorescence, amino acid composition and sequence determination and electronmicroscopy. Some of the booklets give exact details of how to do determinations while others give a more general introduction to the theory and potentialities of the techniques. This is inevitable: a research worker is hardly likely to embark on say an NMR study of a protein armed only with a thirty-page introduction to NMR. On the other hand it would be comparatively easy to read the section on protein concentration determination, decide which method is the most appropriate and then use the recipe given. On the whole the standard of the writing is very high and given straightforward details of what can, and perhaps more importantly, cannot be done. Minor quibbles are that the SDS-gel section does not appear to mention gradient slab gels, which many workers use routinely nowadays, and in the section on techniques for determining molecular weight, all the tables and figures are lumped together at the end rather than being in the relevant places in the text. On the positive side it is good that references include the full title of the article enabling one to make a sensible decision as to whether to look up an original paper or not. Vol B1/II Techniques in Protein and Enzyme Biochemistry -- Part II Every part in this sub-volume contains the word 'enzyme' in its title and is thus complementary to Part I where emphasis is on proteins, as such. A description of techniques of enzyme assay and kinetic studies in the steadystate is followed by the statistical analysis of such data, supplemented by Fortran computer programs. Further parts deal with transient kinetics, isotope exchange methods, stereochemical studies, the identification of essential residues by chemical modification, insolubilized enzymes and enzyme and protein immunochemistry. This last part might well have appeared in volume B1/I as the details it describes are general for proteins including enzymes. Bearing in mind the reservations expressed above about the physical form that this wealth of information takes, one can confidently write that there is now a useful collection that did not exist before. For example, the part on the statistical analysis of enzyme kinetic data draws together all the developments since Cleland's invaluable paper in 1967, although stopping

29 short of describing techniques for the statistical fitting of rate expressions in which the velocity is not simply a hyperbolic function of substrate concentration. In such situations, Cleland's method of calculation, given in one of the computer programs, often fails to converge to a result. But a diligent study of the references might well lead the reader on to these more sophisticated methods. E J Wood and D G Herries

Fermentation and Enzyme Technology by Daniel L C Wang, Charles L Cooney, Arnold L Demain, Peter Dunnill, Arthur E Humphrey, and Malcolm D Lilley. pp 374. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester and New York. 1979. £17.75 This useful book arises from the series of taught courses in this area organized by Massachusetts Institute of Technology over a number of years. The coverage is extremely wide and the great expertise of the six authors is apparent in their ability to, together, cover the diversity of subjects ranging from pure Microbiology and Biochemistry to Biochemical Engineering. Fourteen chapters deal respectively with microbial metabolism, biosynthesis of metabolites and bioconversions, regulation of enzyme production including fermentation kinetics and continuous culture. Other chapters deal with kinetics and engineering of medium sterilization, aeration and agitation, scale-up and instrumentation and control. Three concluding chapters are devoted to enzymes, their isolation, kinetics, immobilization and use in enzyme reactors. It is these last three chapters that many biochemists will find useful both for teaching and research purposes. Enzyme isolation is given a theoretical and practical treatment and many techniques of general interest to biochemists are dealt with in relation to small-scale and large-scale use. These include disruption, precipitation, centrifugation (including zonal), ultrafiltration, and chromatography. Finishing operations include desalting, concentration, drying, storage, purify, formulation, and biosafety considerations. In the next chapter on kinetics and immobilization, a good treatment is presented of diffusional problems in enzyme kinetics. Much has been written and taught on this subject, but some aspects including apparent stabilization needed further consideration. The use of immobilized enzymes as tools is rapidly becoming part of the biochemists and chemists repertoire, for analytical and bioconversion techniques. Up-to-date appraisal of this is therefore very welcome, as is the final chapter on the kinetics of immobilized enzyme reactors, which often seem unexpected to classic enzyme kineticists. This book is useful to biochemistry teachers and researchers for teaching courses to students in Industrial Biochemistry. This is an area where the reviewer has experienced difficulty in showing the student an integrated approach and this book will help to do this. Alan Wiseman

Department of Biochemistry The Universityof Surrey Guildford Surrey, UK

A short introduction reviews the geography of wine-growing, the history of wine-making and the economic significance of the industry. Different varieties of grape and the type of wine associated with them are listed. The problems of vineyard maintenance and grape diseases are discussed. Most of the book is concerned with the technology of wine production. Different types of yeast, their characterization under the microscope, and their different fermentation properties are described, together with the biochemistry of fermentation and of some wine spoilage reactions. The analysis of wine is described in some detail, including chemical analysis of alcohols, sugars, acids, tannins, etc, and the subjective assessment of the total wine by wine-tasting. A reference is even made to the analysis of bouquet by gas chromatography! Biochemists are nowadays paying greater attention than ever before to biotechnology. Perhaps this oldest biotechnology of all, with its accumulation of centuries-old wisdom, and its more modem scientific analysis, can provide assistance in other areas of industrial fermentation; for instance, in the selection of micro-organisms, or simply in the design of industrial plant. T A Scott

Advances in Enzymology Volume 49 Edited by A Meister. pp 373. John Wiley & Sons, New York. 1979./;15.50 This is not an easy book to review because it does not claim to be anything other than a collection of unrelated review articles. The over-all standard of production is satisfactory. This reviewer was somewhat confused by the style of sub-headings that go through a curious sequence of numerals, letters and different typefaces. Also it is unfortunate that the volume could not employ uniform abbreviations. For example, ribose 5-phosphate pyrophosphotransferase appears in two different abbreviated forms. The following summary indicates the scope of the chapters. The number of pages in each chapter is exclusive of references and the date isthat of the most recently cited reference(s).

Kynureninases: enzymologicalproperties and regulation mechanism. K Soda and K Tanizawan (37 pp; 93 refs; 1979). A detailed, but not very readable, review of bacterial, fungal and mammalian kynureninases. The differences between the properties and substrate specificities of the inducible and constitutive types are stressed well.

Exploiting amino acids to learn about membrane structure. H N Christensen (54 pp; 241 refs; 1979 and unpublished). A thorough, readable and didactic account of the use of amino acids and their derivatives as substrates for membrane transport systems.

The role of metals in enzyme-catalyzed [sic!] substitutions at each of the phosphorus atoms ofATP. A S Mildvan (24 pp; 98 refs; 1978). A review of methods for determining the molecular mechanisms of phosphate transfer reactions. Good for chemists, heavy going for others.

Tryptophan synthase: structure, function, and subunit interaction. E W Miles (36 pp; 121 refs; 1978). The fascinating molecular genetics of this system occupy a small part of this chapter. Most of it is concerned with physical measurements of the enzyme and its reactions. Understanding the recognition of transfer RNAs by aminoacyl transfer RNA synthetases. P R Schimmel (33 pp; 112 refs; 1977). A thorough review of a fascinating topic but deficient in one respect: the proofreading and correction of mis-charged aminoacyl tRNA and the work of Hopfield and others in this field are omitted.

MitochondrialATPase. H S Penefsky (51 pp; 213 refs; 1978). This readable,

Der VC'ein:Bereitung, Behandlung, Untersuchung by L Jacob, E Lemperle and E Weiss. pp 294. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart. 1979. DM48 The first edition of this comprehensive work on the art and science of winemaking already has a fine reputation amongst its German-speaking users, both amateur and professional. The present second edition serves only to establish the book more firmly and to increase its reputation. It is to be hoped that the publishers will give serious consideration to the preparation of an English translation.

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anthoratative and detailed review is the best part of the book. The critical evaluation of methodology is excellent.

Synthesis of phosphoribosyl pyrophospkate in mammalian cells. M A Becker, K O Raivo and J E Seegmiller (26 pp; 93 refs; 1978 and 'in press'). Roughly equal weight is given to the biosynthetic enzyme and its regulation. There are no figures to relieve the fairly dense prose. For prpp addicts only. The book ends with comprehensive indices to this volume and also an indexed summary of the articles in all forty-nine volumes in the series to date. J H Parish