edited by H. Osada. Springer-Verlag (2000) 319 pages. ISBN 4-431-70247-4 £86/$149
Bioprobes: Biochemical Tools for Investigating Cell Function, edited by H. Osada, is not the sort of book I have bought in the past. Maybe I was wrong. This review has been an opportunity to test my prejudice.
The 319 pages of this book are divided into two parts. The first part reviews four main fields in which bioprobes have been crucial to our understanding of biological function. The second part, ‘Bioprobes at a glance’, describes the structure, biological applications and biological activities of ∼80 chemicals and gives a bit of historical background: who discovered each product, when and how. I like that.
Discoveries of toxins or small molecules from microorganisms have provided tools that can be exquisitely specific (although you never know...) and have allowed us to decipher complex pathways by hitting specific targets and asking what happens....
