Book review

This is the second volume in a series called Primers in Developmental Biology designed to review ‘rapidly emerging and important disciplines’ within this area. It was therefore with a feeling of considerable curiosity that I turned to the contents pages to see how the editor had chosen to cover the vast subject indicated by the title. It turns out that the cover of the book is very misleading. The book is not directly concerned with mammalian developmental biology, and there are no chapters on any aspect of embryonic development or differentiation either in vivo or in vitro. A better title would have been “The Molecular Genetics of Cultured Mammalian Cells”, but still the editor’s selection of chapter topics is a little idiosyncratic. The book is divided into four sections, the first covering the regulation of gene expression and starting out with a somewhat askance look at the regulation of transcription. There are nice chapters on the role of DNA methylation from Christy and Scangos, and on enhancers from. Rosenthal, Laimins and Khoury. There is nothing about RNA polymerase II per se, but instead, a chapter from Hirschhorn and Baserga about “Gene Expression in Cells with an Altered RNA Polymerase II”. The remaining chapters within the section deal with specific genes: one chapter on “Housekeeping Genes”, one on the glucocorticoidinducible promoter of MMTV, and no less than two chapters on dihydrofolate reductase genes (dhfr). The next section, entitled “Expression of Heterologous Genes”, gives licence to extend the scope of the book further, if this were needed. The topics are as diverse as avian egg white genes, and the use of Xenopus laevis as an experimental organism in which to examine gene expression. These topics seem somewhat out of place, whilst the remaining chapter in this section, yet another dealing predominantly with dhfr, seems unduly repetitive. Indeed, in a series of ‘off the record’ conversations between the editor and the authors, which are nevertheless recorded at the beginning of the book, the editor is absolutely right to pose the question, “Why does dhfr get so much press?” There are huge omissions from the third section, which aims to cover “Virus-Associated Systems”, although the chosen subjects are reviewed extremely well. These include the “Molecular Biology of Hepatitis B Virus”, a “Molecular Analysis of Tumour Metastasis” and the “Transport and Processing of Viral-Membrane Glycoproteins”. Given the impact of studies with adenovirus, SV40 and retroviruses on our molecular understanding of major aspects of cellular physiology, it is surprising not to find chapters dealing specifically with such groups of viruses. It is true that the contributions of such studies have been extensively reviewed elsewhere, but chapters covering these areas would not have been amiss. The final section on “Human Genetic Diseases” is focused upon possible approaches towards gene therapy. A chapter from Mclvor deals with immunodeficiencies associated with the absence of purine nucleoside phosphorylase or adenosine deaminase, and how these may be studied in cultured cells using gene transfer techniques. The final chapter from Cline gives a short survey of how cloned genes may be introduced into haematopoietic cells, and looks at the potential of these approaches for correcting a variety of gene deficiencies that affect the haematopoietic lineage. Finally, I feel bound to comment upon a series of questions from the editor that, together with the authors’ responses, appear at the end of every chapter. My reaction was that these do not add anything to the book, and I feel the editor would have done better to ask the authors to clarify these points within the text of their chapters. In conclusion, the chapters themselves are on the whole very well written and should provide both useful reference works and introductory texts to their subject areas. I do not, however, feel that the editor has fulfilled the objectives that he sets himself in his preface and introduction to the book. Given the amount of subject matter that could have gone into a book with this title, perhaps his task was impossible.