The inorganic chemistry of biological processes: Second edition

159

Inorganic Biochemistry, Volume 3 (Specialist Periodical Chemistry).

Reports

of the

Royal

Society of

Senior Reporter: H A O Hill. pp 397. The Royal Society of Chemistry, London. 1982. £56 ISBN 0 - 8 5 1 8 6 - 5 6 5 - 8

Volume 3 of this particular branch of the 'SPR' family was published in May 1982 and is said to review the literature 'up to 1980'. For the majority of the articles this means 'up to, but not including, 1980'. The honourable exceptions to this are the sections on the transport and storage of transition metals, on haemoglobin, and to some extent that on organic elements in biology and medicine. The rest appear to contain references to publications no later than 1979. There is a great problem for the Editor of review collections of this type. The diligent authors, who stick to the deadlines laid down, turn their articles in on time. The dilatory authors, on the other hand, delay handing in their contributions - for whatever r e a s o n - and then find that they can include later citations in their reviews! So much for diligence! The manuscript is not complete until the last contribution has been received by the Editor! Add to this the inevitable (why inevitable?) delays in typesetting, printing and binding, and you have an editor's headache. As the editor of the current volume says in his Foreword " . . . different methods of preparation and production must be used" if further volumes are to be successful. It must be admitted that this series is well produced and beautifully printed, and is remarkably free from typographical errors, etc, - but at what cost? Not only is there a long delay before publication, but also the price is beyond the personal pocket, and may be beyond libraries that are trying to find ways of cutting their outlay on books. There is a real dilemma here, particularly as it is also not very clear (see Foreword) whether anyone actually reads the reviews. I do not know what the solution is. I certainly do know that a great deal of work goes into collecting material for the various sections and consider it a great pity if no one finds them useful. Perhaps the coverage attempted simply is too wide. In attempting to cover every paper that has been printed up to a certain date, almost all of the authors are forced to resort to sentences of the type "The interaction of lanthanide ions with PS vesicles 117 and with PC vesicles 11 a has been studied". Setting aside the question of whether these interactions have been studied successfully, or whether any conclusions were reached, the scientist active in this area would have picked up as much information as this from Current Contents two years ago. In either case he will have to go and look up the paper to see if it is of any interest to him, He might well conclude that it would be better to spend his money on Current Contents, or persuade his library to buy another copy. If the above sentence is read by someone not active in this field but wanting recent findings digested for him, it still does not help. A narrower coverage would bring more expertise to particular topics and allow proper reviewing rather than merely reporting. Finally, I am not sure whether or not biochemists read these reports: if they do not, it is a pity. Are they intended for biochemists, or are they intended for chemists who wish to keep up with developments in biochemistry? If the latter, are they successful? Having said all this, I must say that there is in Volume 3, a splendid collection of information. The task of keeping up with the literature is enormous and we must ultimately be grateful to those who are prepared and have the capability to review, condense, explain or simply report. The main sections are on Inorganic Analogues of Biological Molecules, Storage, Transport and Function of the Cations of Groups IA and IIA and of Transition Metals, Oxygen-Transport Proteins, Oxidases

BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION

10(4) 1982

and Reductases, Zinc Metalloenzymes, Manganese Proteins, Trace Elements and Nutrition, and Inorganic Elements in Biology and Medicine. There is no Index, but instead, a nine-page, extended Contents makes it reasonably easy to find what interests you. I am well aware of the amount of effort that goes into a production like this, and I believe it is a worthy venture, worthy of support. Something must be done to get the information to us more quickly in order to make all this effort worthwhile. E J Wood The Inorganic Chemistry S e c o n d Edition

of

Biological Processes:

by M N Hughes. pp 338. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester. 1981. £9.90. ISBN 0 - 4 7 1 - 2 7 8 1 5 - 7 This book, in the rapidly expanding bioinorganic area, is concerned in the main with metalloproteins. It is timely, but extremely ambitious at present for one person to attempt to cover this huge area, with the ground shifting significantly on every visit to the library. If it isn't a report of a new metalloprotein (there are for example now over 100 zinc enzymes) it is the synthesis of an inorganic analogue in an attempt better to understand the active site chemistry. If it isn't a new crystal structure, it is some EXAFS, NMR, ESR or Resonance Raman spectroscopic study yielding more information about the metal active site structure. Much is happening and there is a great deal of literature to monitor. The book is without question a vast improvement on the first edition published in 1972, and the two really bear little resemblance to each other. The inorganic contribution to the area has surely matured greatly over the last 10 years, and 'modelling' now conforms to more rigorous rules which clearly distinguish it from the more routine inorganic chemistry. Dr Hughes has drawn together the various threads and has been remarkably successful in presenting a readable and on the whole up to date account. Inorganic and bio-chemists alike surely cannot fail to find this an extremely useful volume. Having said this a few comments are perhaps in order. Some errors would (and should) have been avoided had the author rounded up more of his friends for that helpful critical reading. The inner-sphere component of the reaction of Cr 2+ with IrC162- yields Cr(H20)sC12÷ and not Cr(H20)63÷ as the principal product (p 48). The mechanism for the Fe 2÷ reduction of FeOH 2÷ is now more likely to be OH- bridging and not H-atom transfer (p 48). The reduction potential of the Fe(CN)6 a-,4- couple is generally taken to be around 410 mV and not 220 mV (p 128). An otherwise good chapter on 02 carriers has been spoilt by inconsistency with regard to the superoxo and peroxo terminology for metal bond 02. To say once that (as with many formal oxidation state assignments) electron densities do vary, and (heaven f o r b i d ! ) s o m e people prefer to confuse by not using these simple designations, would have been adequate. Thus a prevalent (and consistent) view now is that oxyhaemoglobin is to be regarded as Fe(III)-O2- and that there are no examples of neutral coordinated 02. I would have liked to see more in the way of illustrations of metalloprotein crystal structures, and more information regarding amino-acid sequences. Articles describing the principles of the EXAFS technique by Hodgson and colleagues in Chemical and Engineering News and in Progress in Inorganic Chemistry should perhaps have been cited. Possibly the chapters on alkali and alkali-earth metals, and on metal ions and chelating ligands in medicine are a luxury which could have been omitted in view of the already extensive commitment. Notwithstanding these comments I regard this as the best book available in the bioinorganic area at this time. It is good value and certainly to be recommended. A G Sykes