BIOCHEMICAL EDUCATION

October 1978

Vol. 6

No. 4

93

The Reproduction of Eukaryotic Cells

By D M Prescott Number 96 m the Carohna Biology
R e a d e r s Series e d i t e d b y J J. H e a d a n d p u b h s h e d b y t h e C a r o h n a B~olog~cal S u p p l y C o m p a n y , B u r l i n g t o n , N o r t h C a r o h n a , U S A 1978 16 p a g e s $1 50 (or for 10 or m o r e , e a c h $1 15) The area covered m this booklet is one of major importance and of interest to cell biologists and biochemists ahke Amongst others, one of the aims of the research in tfus area is to understand the control of the processes revolved and thereafter to devise ways of restoring the control where tt appears to have been lost For example, the lmphcatlons for a deeper understanding of the cancer cell and its origins are obviously considerable, notwithstanding the poss~bdlty that the ad hoc approach to cancer therapy may temporardy outflank the f u n d a m e n t a l one It ts therefore perfectly justffmble to bring before students of biology, medicine, biochemistry or related disciplines, a resum6 of some of the current studies and achievements in this held Professor Prescott has done this from the point of view of the cell biologist The coverage is surprisingly comprehensive for a short discourse It includes the concept of regulahon of cell reproductmn (together with the a s t o m s h m g fact that the rate of cell reproduchon in the adult h u m a n may exceed 20 x 10~ cell dwlslons per second throughout hfe), the components of cell reproduction (I e , cell growth, chromosome duplication and cell division), the cell life cycle, including some methodology for determining the length of cell cycle phases using the classical division into GI, S, Gz and D (= M for mitosis elsewhere), the nature of the four sections of the cell cycle, methods of cell synchrony, control of the cell cycle m the G1 period, the concept of Go, m which the cell is considered by some to have withdrawn from the cell cycle, contact mfubltion or density-dependent mfublhon, loss of regulation of reproduchon in cancer cells, and finally, the genetics of the cell cycle Since all of th~s is dealt with m only 14 pages of text, the depth at which information is presented ~s necessardy superhcial m places In general the text is lucidly written except for one bhnder where "chalones are presumably thought to be proteins or glycoprotems" Do we presumably tfunk9 W h a t other processes of the mind are there~ If Professor Prescott w~shes to imply that the chemistry of chalones requires clarlhcat~on, he wdl fred many who support him An intelligent s~xth former or first year honours or medical student would have httle dffhculty in comprehending the content of this booklet Not having encountered these CBB texts before, I am not aware of what editorial policy exists with regard to the placing of references In the text The collection of four of these at the end would no doubt supply all of the additional reformation reqmred, but one is m c h n e d to wonder whether the range of student to whom the booklet would appeal could have been extended to a more senior level If references had been given to some of the key experiments described Where, say, 100 students in any one year are studying b~ology or biochemistry m one college, not all of them may have access to Professor Prescott's book of the same title, although it is presumably Important for them all to know about the reproduction of eukaryotlc cells, they may, however, have ready access to a set of reference journals In my experience, one of the most frequent complaants of students ~s not knowing where to find add~honal or even primary sources of Information relating to lectures or to facts brought up in booklets of this kind Not everybody would mention ~t, and Professor Prescott doesn't, probably for reasons of space, but there are other conceptual ways of looking at the cell cycle besides that outlined m this booklet One of the four references given at the end (Cell Cycle Controls, ec[ by Paddla et al Academic Press, N Y , 1974), however, contains an arhcle by Smith and Martin m which the cell cycle is dlwded into two d~stmct parts an indeterminate or A state in which the cells remain for an Indefinite period following mitosis and a determmlshc or B phase of relatively constant length which contains the characteristic features of S, Gz and mitosis It ~s suggested that the regulation of cell prohferat~on depends upon a

single, randomly-occurrmg, rate-hmltmg step which upon completion allows transition of the cell from the A-state to the Bphase Whale this alternahve approach tells us no more about the biochemistry of events, it does provide a quantitative treatment of the rate of entry of cells into S phase under different steady state conditions It also tmphes that the crlhcal point of c o m m i t m e n t to S phase is not the m l t m h o n of DNA synthesis itself but some event preceding tfus (see for example Brooks, m Cell 12, 311-317, 1977) One other minor omission is that the mention of studies on the genetics of the cell cycle using temperature-sensitive m u t a n t s of yeast should surely have merited a reference to one of Hartwell's rewews (e g , Science, 183, 46, 1974) since tfus aspect of the study has great potentml and might be of interest to students whose appehte had been whetted by this booklet My conclusion is that the booklet is well worth reading by any student wanting an introduction to the field 1 recommend it to them and I hope that, for their sakes, the second edition will have an advanced as well as a general reading list Irwn R Johnston Department of Biochemistry University College London

Edited by

Principles of Enzymatic Analysis H U Bergmeyer m collaboration with

& New

K G a w e h n lap 2 6 0 V e r l a g C h e m l e , W e m h e l m Y o r k , 1978 P a p e r b a c k D M 44 00

The topics covered m this book range from enzyme kinetics, umts of enzyme activity and statlsheal analysts of data through a consideration of sample preparation, assay vessels and dispensers to a series of relatwely brief surveys of ddferent types of assay methods U n h k e the editors larger work, Methods of Enzymatic Analysis, this book does not give recipes of mdwldual assay methods but is restricted to considering the basic theory and principles revolved At times this hmlts the usefulness of the book, for example the different methods for determining protein concentration are compared but we are not told how any of them should be carried out This book is thus a source of information on the design, choice and interpretation of assay methods rather than a laboratory vadem e d u m , but unfortunately Its usefulness is hmited by a surprising unevenness in the quality of individual chapters In the theoretical section for example, the treatment of coupled assay kinetics lacks n g o u r a n d the section on steady-state kmehcs contains misleading reformation on the forms of the kinetic equahons that describe blsubstrate reachons In other chapters the selection of topics covered is unusual, for example in the sechon on volume measurement plunger pipettes are considered In detad but there Is no mention of the mlcrohtre syringe, which many would regard as being the most satisfactory instrument for dmpensmg small volumes There is no treatment of the methods for cleaning the vessels and dispensers used in assays although the preparahon, stabd~ty storage and standardisatlon of reagents is considered Another drawback is the somewhat inept translation of the book which at times tends to obscure the meaning and there are also a n u m b e r of typographical errors which make it difficult to follow the development of equations Because of these shortcomings I would not recommend this book as p r e h m m a r y reading to anyone starlang to use enzymic assay methods for the first time Despite them, however, the book contains a great deal of useful reformation and I found the, all to short, treatments of different types of assay methods including photometric a n d radtochemlcal methods, enzyme-hnked lmmunoassays, assays with msolubdlsed enzymes, enzyme electrodes and automated assay techmques, to be most useful gtudes to their uses and hmltatlons Tfus book deserves to be read for the material In these sections prowded that some of the other parts are treated with caution K F T~pton Biochemistry Department Trinity College Umvers~ty of Dublin Ireland