268 TIBS 11,,- June 1986

Harrison 26, the great experimental embryologist. Harrison was well known for his reluctance to theorize, yet he once wrote of a speculative suggestion by Needham: 'This may be an advanced position to take at the present time, but then progress is made only by taking advanced positions'.

References 1 Schrrdinger, E. (1944) What is Life?, Cam-

bridge University Press 2 Olby, R. C. (1971) J. Hist. Biol. 4, 119-148 3 Olby, R. C. (1974) The Path to the Double

Helix, Macmillan 4 Yoxen, E. J. (1979) Hist. Sci. 17, 17-52 5 Teich, M. (1975) Hist. Sci. 13, 264-283 6 Judson, H. F. (1979) The Eighth Day of Crea-

tion, Jonathan Cape 7 Heitler, W. (1961) Biogr. Mere. Fellows R.

Soc. 7,221-228 8 Popper, K. (1976) Unended Quest, Fontana 9 Donnan, F. G. (1936) Acta Biotheor. 2, 1-10

10 Schr6dinger, E. (1936) Nature 138, 13-14 11 Schr6dinger, E. (1935) Science and the Human

Temperament, Cambridge University Press 12 Sherrington, C. S. (1940) Man on his Nature,

Cambridge University Press 13 Timofreff-Ressovsky, N. W., Zimmer, K. G.

and Delbriick, M. (1935) Nachr. Ges. Wiss. Gottingen, Math.-Phys. Kl., Fachgruppe 6 1, 189-245

14 Driesch, H. (1907-1908) The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, Black

15 Jacob, F. (1974) The Logic of Living Systems: A History of Heredity, Allen Lane

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sity Press 17 Crick, F. H. C. (1965) Br. Med. Bull. 21,

183-186 18 Watson, J. D. (1966) in Phageand the Origins

of Molecular Biology, (Cairns, J., Stent, G. S. and Watson, J. D., eds), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

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River, Allen and Unwin 24 Brillouin, L. (1949 Am. Sc. 37,559-568 25 Gamow, G. (1953) Mr Tompkins learns the

Facts of Life Cambridge University Press 26 Harrison, R. G. (1936) Collecting Net 11,

217-226, reprinted in Wilens, S. ed. (1969) Or- ganization and Development of the Embryo, Yale University Press

Book Reviews Selec t ive geneUcs

Genet ics and Molecular Biology

by Robert Schleif, Addison Wesley, 1985. £18.95 (xix + 626 pages) ISBN 0201 074184

This is a very individual and rather quirky book, said to have evolved from a very successful course taught over a number of years to graduate students and final year undergraduates at Bran- deis University. The stated aim of the book is to encourage 'thinking and an appreciation of beautiful experiments', and I have no doubt that it could have this effect on many students. It is written in a terse, vigorous and informal style that many will find attractive. The figures, though not the polished works of art one generally finds in American texts, make their points clearly and with a minimum of fuss. There is a welcome emphasis on quantitative reasoning, with bits of relevant chemical kinetics, thermodynamics and statistics scattered throughout.

The scope of the book is best sum- marized by the headings of the five sec- tions into which it is divided. These are, in sequence: cell structure and cell con- stituents, genetics and genetic engineer- ing, gene regulation, mobile DNA (including a chapter on immunoglobulin gene rearrangement) and, finally, spe- cial topics, which include macromolec- ular assembly, chemotaxis and oncogenes. The treatment of all these themes is avowedly highly selective, with some examples being described in a fair degree of depth, but with no attempt at any synoptic overview. The emphasis is

heavily on the prokaryotic side, with only occasional excursions into eukary- otic territory. Thus, in Section 3, regula- tion of gene action is illustrated by fairly detailed descriptions of three classic sys- tems: the lac and ara operons as exam- ples of negative and positive regulation, respectively, and the trp operon as an example of attenuation. There follow four pages on the yeast mating type switch, two on Drosophila DOPA decar- boxylase and two on Drosophila yolk protein genes. The section concludes with a rather sketchy account of regulat- ory circuitry in bacteriophage ~.

Considering the relatively advanced readership at which it is aimed, this book is notably short on detail and background. For example, despite the inclusion of two chapters on genetic engineering, one of them designated 'ad- vanced', almost nothing is said about the derivation of cloning plasmids. There is only a passing reference to the resis- tance-transfer plasmids which have pro- vided most of the selectable markers, and nothing at all about plasmid ColE1, which supplied the replication origin of so many of the hardest-worked cloning vehicles. The only specific references to the literature are where the author acknowledges the use of someone else's figure. At the end of each chapter there are a few general references, mostly reviews or especially important papers, followed by a list of 20-50 papers recom- mended for 'deeper reading'. The latter appear not to be arranged in any particu- lar order. No doubt some of them illumi- nate passages in the preceding chapters,

1986, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam 0376-5G67/86~12.00

but the reader has to put in a lot of work to discover the relationships. Maybe that is the author's intention, but I am afraid that most students won't bother and will just take his brief, interesting, simplified and not always perfectly accurate state- ments on trust.

As a geneticist, I am somewhat con- cerned about the book's title. It contains remarkably little genetics as I under- stand the subject. For example, there is no explicit mention of the use of the com- plementation criterion for assigning mutations to genes. There is very little on genetic mapping and, even more surpris- ingly in a book of this sort, nothing on restriction site mapping of DNA. Mendelian genetics stops after the expla- nation of the 3:1 F 2 ratio. The 'formal genetics' of Drosophila and yeast do not have space, with one page each, to get off the ground. The account of meiosis consists of a very simplified half-page description of the actual behaviour of the chromosomes followed by five pages describing the Meselson and Radding model of genetic recombination, which is presented without any of the genetic evidence that led to its formulation.

I am afraid that many or most teachers will find insufficient depth in this book to justify their recommending it as a main text for graduate students or advanced undergraduates, and insufficient breadth for the earlier undergraduate years. Nevertheless, many students of molecu- lar biology, and some of their teachers too, would benefit from reading Dr Schleif's clear accounts of specific topics.

J. R. S. FINCHAM Department of Genetics, University of Cam- bridge, U K.