BOOK REVIEWS
47 1
and active group of people working in this area aiming to
produce enzymic-like catalysts. I recognise that the inclusion of
such a chapter requires the presence of a speaker, and can only
conclude that the organizers were unable to obtain the services
of an expert in this area or were not able to fit this subject in,
owing to the time available.
I believe that the book will be valuable for people already
working in particular areas of catalysis who wish to know
something about other aspects of the subject.
A. WILLIAMS
Plant Organelles [Volume 9 of Methodological Surveys: (B) Biochemistry]
E. REID (Editor)
Ellis Horwood, Chichester, 1979, pp. 232, f18.50
Biochemical skills. such as the isolation of subcellular organelles,
are not unlike those of cookery. There are two ways of learning
them: by working with an expert cook, or by reading a
cookbook. The latter method is rarely as easy as it sounds; what
do you do when you follow the recipe, and the cakes don’t rise?
How do you know when your jam is ready to set? A good
cookbook, besides providing recipes, should also describe what
the results should be like, and how you can tell if you are going
wrong.
This book describes methods for isolating a whole range of
subcellular organelles and membrane fractions from plants,
including chloroplasts, mitochondria, nuclei, vacuoles, glyoxysomes, peroxisomes, Golgi apparatus and plasma membrane.
Considered as a cookbook, this is a most useful one by the
above criteria. The contributors not only give handy recipes for
isolation of the components, but also discuss the reason why the
methods were selected, and criteria of homogeneity and viability
of the final product. The book is the proceedings of a Subcellular
Methodology Forum held in 1978 at the University of Surrey. It
therefore includes an up-to-date review of techniques, such as
the use of silica sol and Metrizamide as density-gradient media,
and phase-partition methods. The technique of isolating protoplasts (whole cells lacking the tough wall, but with their outer
membranes intact) by enzyme digestion, now provides a means
of isolating organelles without severe mechanical disruption. The
progress in isolation techniques is exemplified by results with
leaf tissue. Until recently, all fractions of components such as
mitochondria were green, as if the chlorophyll somehow rubbed
off on them. It is now clear that chlorophyll is confined to the
inner membranes of chloroplasts, fragments of which had
contaminated the earlier preparations. It is possible to isolate
mitochondria and even chloroplast outer envelopes in a
chlorophyll-free state.
In most of the articles the emphasis is on quality of the
preparation at the expense of quantity, to isolate relatively small
amounts of the organelles in as pure a state as possible. The
objectives are to determine the characteristic protein and lipid
composition of each organelle; the location of particular
enzymes and receptors within the cell; and the relationship
between one organelle and another. Some of the organelles, such
as chloroplasts, have been isolated and studied for years, and the
emphasis is on refinements to produce more active preparations
with greater purity and intactness. At the other extreme, there
appears as yet to be no satisfactory method of isolating
microtubules.
When you have followed the recipe, you need criteria of the
quality of the result. At the end of the book there is a discussion
and compilation of data from several of the contributors, on
markers for the different organelles, both biochemical and
morphological. It is clear that this is still an area of controversy.
In a postscript, the Editor provides some criteria (due to D. J.
Morre) that should be presented when publishing results
obtained from isolated organelle fractions. If you are going to
say that an enzyme, for instance, is characteristic of a particular
organelle, then you should demonstrate not only that it is
present in that fraction, but that it is not also present everywhere
else.
R. CAMMACK
Water: a Comprehensive Treatise (Volume 6)
FELIX FRANKS (Editor)
Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York, 1979, pp. 455,
$45.00
Neither biomolecular science nor biochemistry itself can be
advanced without a simultaneous advance in the understanding
of the water that sustains it. Therefore water aficionados are
united in the belief that every biochemist needs to take notice of
their thinking.
There have been five previous volumes in this invaluable
series, dealing not only with liquid water, but also with
crystalline hydrates, electrolytes, aqueous solutions, both of
small and of very large molecules, and with water in disperse
systems. Since the manuscripts were made ready for the first
volume (nearly 9 years ago), there have been a sufficient number
of significant advances in the study of aqueous systems to merit
some updating; hence the preparation of what many will hope to
be the first of a number of ‘recent-advances volumes’ on the
subject.
VOl. 8
The chapters include studies of computer simulation (D. W.
Wood), the hydrophobic interaction (D. Y. C. Chan ef al.)
solvent effects on kinetics (J. B. F. N. Engberts), the application
of ab initio methods (W. Graham Richards), water in protein
crystals (J. L. Finney) and X-ray and neutron-scattering (J. E.
Enderby & G. W. Neilson).
All the chapters are stimulating and useful, but a certain lack
of accord between the authors sometimes surfaces. Attitudes to
computer simulation vary widely. There is not yet agreement
about the magnitude or the importance of the ‘non-pairadditivity’ of the hydrogen bond; nor about the degree of
importance of the hydrophobic interaction. But it is at least clear
that, in many important biochemical processes, the water plays
the role of maintaining a very fine balance between opposing
forces. Now that Eastern Philosophy has become fashionable