(ed) Practical Approach Series, 335 pp. Oxford: IRL Press Ltd
Science is similar to those other imperatives of life; eating, drinking, sex and politics. Although talk, rumour and gossip are rife the essential thrill comes from doing it. The life of the professional scientific voyeur must be a frustrating one, for when the talking ends and the pub closes there will always be more experiments to do. For those who do them, IRL Press have produced over the years the Practical Approach series, through which practitioners of science communicate the bare bones of methodology, only lightly sauced with data and speculation.
This volume of the series, edited by Marilyn Monk, is a timely addition. Whilst the study of Drosophila and C. elegans accelerates towards a complete morphological and molecular description of development, knowledge of even the most studied of mammalian species (by which we primarily mean mouse) is much inferior....
