Book Reviews: Protein Nanotechnology: Protocols, Instrumentation and Applications. By Tuan Vo-Dinh...

Proteomics 2006, 6, 731–733 731

Book Reviews

Protein Nanotechnology:

Protocols,

Instrumentation and

Applications

Methods in Molecular Biology,vol. 300Tuan Vo-Dinh (Ed.)Humana Press, 2005, pp. 480ISBN: 1-58829-310-6

This book will be noticed by thosealarmed by the word ‘nanobiotechnol-ogy’ and anyone fearing the “grey goo”scenario first hinted at by nanotechnol-ogy theorist Dr. K. Eric Drexler in his1986 book “Engines of Creation”. Thiswas developed further in MichaelCrichton’s “Prey” and more recentlytaken to the extreme by the media. Butscience fiction writers and readers willbe disappointed if they are hoping tofind doomsday material. This newlypublished volume, edited by Dr Vo-Dinh (a physicist by education and theauthor of over 300 research papers andof 5 books on spectroscopy and chemi-cal analysis) is aimed at a broad scien-tific audience and provides an overviewof the area of protein nanobiotechnol-ogy. It starts with an easy-to-read intro-duction, which is suitable for the gen-eral audience with or without a scien-tific background and it should calmdown readers with a nervous predis-position to runaway self-replicatingnano-machines, followed by a collec-tion of nineteen articles, covering var-ious aspects of protein analysis, proteinengineering and protein based tools,technologies and nanosensors.

The main body of this volume maynot be readily comprehended by thegeneral reader and is more likely to suitreadership with the relevant back-ground in molecular biology, biochem-istry, chemistry or physics. An initialscan of the Index, which goes from“Alzheimer’s disease” to “X-ray” via

“Nanowires”, “Self-assembled mono-layers” and “Tissue engineering”, isguaranteed to strike fear into heartsand minds of a general audience, towhom these represent alarming sym-bols of modern, uncontrollable scienceand technology developments. How-ever, those reading further will discovernothing of the kind. Far from it, thisbook provides a detailed and well-refer-enced snapshot of the state-of-the-art inprotein chemistry and physics as wellas the realistic capabilities and practicalapplications of ‘nano’ and ‘nanobio’technologies.

I found this book to be slightlybiased towards optical and spectro-scopic methods, which is not surpris-ing taking into account the scientificbackground of the Editor. Four articles,which are written by or contributed toby Dr Vo-Dinh cover a range of tech-nologies and sensors utilising fluores-cence, Raman scattering and near-filedoptical microscopy and describe theirapplications to protein analysis (notnecessarily at nano-scale) and medicaldiagnostics. The remaining 15 articlescover basic protein biochemistry (fold-ing and misfolding, 3-D structure,crystallisation), biomolecular interac-tions (at the ‘macro’ scale such as pro-tein affinity reagents and immu-noassays, as well as at ‘micro’ and‘nano’ scales, such as particle- andmicroarray-based multiplex sensors,molecularly imprinted polymers), car-bon nanotubes and their biosensorapplications, scanning force and scan-ning electrochemical microscopy formolecular biosensing.

Some might argue that this book isa rather artificial collection of looselyrelated papers, but I would disagreestrongly. This is a well balanced workwith contributions from 50 expertsfrom different but overlapping fields,which connects traditional approachesand techniques of studying proteinswith the rapidly growing range of their‘nano’ uses and applications. This book

will provide a stimulating read and agood point of reference to an openminded scientist wishing to expandinto the fascinating, interdisciplinaryand largely unexplored ‘hyperspace’ ofnanobiotechnology.

Mikhail SolovievSchool of Biological SciencesRoyal Holloway, University of LondonUnited Kingdom

Microarrays in Clinical

Diagnostics

Methods in Molecular Medicine,vol. 114Thomas Joos and Paolo Fortina(Eds.)Humana Press, 2005, pp. 288ISBN: 1-58829-394-7

Microarray technology has devel-oped into a well-established technologyused in many laboratories all over the

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