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higher plants’. In addition, many of the articles have thought-provoking speculative sections of the sort rarely found in other books: ‘possible func- tions of plant lectins’; ‘(future) ap- proaches to defining resistance and avirulence gene products (in host- pathogen interactions)’; ‘ towards a molecular model (of pollen-stigma in- teraction)’; ‘Methodology’ and ‘re- search potential’ (of protoplast fusion techniques). One guesses that an edit- orial request was made for useful tables and sections on practical applications and future research. If so, it is greatly appreciated.

These characteristics make the book very useful for anybody from the advanced undergraduate upwards who is interested in plant cellular interaction via receptor-ligand recognition. Neo- phytes will find excellent reviews and old hands will find thorough discussions of techniques that may be useful in their own systems. For example, Chadwick et al. discuss their use of Fab and Fab’ fragments of antibodies made against membrane proteins involved in cell-cell adhesion in wall-less stages of slime mould aggregation. Since Fab frag- ments are likely to be able to penetrate cell walls much more readily than whole antibodies, researchers involved in higher plant immunocytochemistry could glean from this quite detailed section experimental approaches that may work well with their material.

A few caveats, however, must be registered. The literature reviews for this volume appear to have ended in late 1984, so it is not as up to date as one would have hoped for a book published well into 1986. Also, despite its title, only three of the twelve chapters are on hormone receptors in plants, and three of the twelve chapters are not on plants, but rather on organisms from the kingdom Fungi. One might have more descriptively titled this book ‘Receptors for Cellular Interactions in Plants’ and then, in small print, have added ‘and a few other organisms’. Still, Chadwick and Garrod were courageous to attempt to bring all of this ‘plant’ receptor- ligand work together in one volume, and I think the effort paid off. Its very breadth, and the high quality of the individual reviews, make it stimulating reading. And, though none of the authors can describe their ligand- receptor interaction for us in anything like the molecular detail of, say, the ,8-adrenergic receptor, one puts down this book with a mental list a mile long of good, new research ideas.

I 1 M A R K JACOBS is on sabbatical at the Department of Biochemistry, Cambridge University, Cambridge CB2 1Q W, U.K. His permanent position is at the Department of Biology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081, USA.

I 1

An Annotated Bibliography for ’ U rchinologists ‘ The Sea Urchin Embryo - A Develop- mental Biological System. G. GIUDICE. (1986). Springer-Verlag. Pp. 276. DM 148. By Rudolf A. Raff

In 1875 Oskar Hertwig determined that fertilization resulted in the fusion of the cell nuclei of the sperm and the egg. This first, and very profound, obser- vation was possible because. Hertwig had carefully chosen a new experimental organism in which the events of fer- tilization could be easily observed. This was the sea urchin. In these days of easily arranged air shipments of live marine animals, Richard Goldschmidt’s account of the transport of sea urchins from the Mediterranean across the Alps to the Hertwigs’ laboratory in Munich for the annual ‘fertilization day’ has an air of nineteenth-century quaintness. But it was exciting, and presaged the work of Boveri and other pioneer experimental embryologists, as well as much of current molecular studies of development.

After a century, sea-urchin embryos continue to be fascinating as well as aesthetically unparalleled subjects for investigation and, starting with Ethel Brown Harvey’s The American Arbacia and Other Sea Urchins (1956), there have been several books on aspects of sea urchin development. The latest, The Sea Urchin Embryo: A Developmental Biological System by Giovanni Giudice, is described by its author as being a continuation of his 1973 book, The Developmental Biology of the Sea Urchin Embryo. His intention appears to be to provide ‘a fairly complete key to the current literature on the subject’, and indeed the bibliography contains over 1800 citations of work up to 1984.

Is the book a success, and what is its appropriate audience? The question can be answered at two levels: from the view of the apparent goal of its author, and from the view of what would constitute an informative overview of current studies of sea urchin develop- ment for a broad audience of students interested in development as well as

professionals already working on echi- noid embryos. At the first level, as an annotated bibliography of the relatively recent literature, this publication will be of utility to working ‘urchinologists’. In fact the book represents an heroic effort to summarize 12 years of literature on sea urchin development. The serious- ness of the author in this goal is evident from the addendum, which contains brief summaries of papers published after the body of the text was written. The book is divided into two sections, one on ‘Development’ and the other on ‘Nucleic acids and proteins’. These sections encompass chapters on fer- tilization, morphogenesis, energy meta- bolism, DNA, RNA, protein synthesis, and nucleo-mitochondria1 interactions.

What ties these topics together is that sea urchins are used for studies of all of these parts of embryology, but the book does not provide a sufficient conceptual link between these subjects, nor does it place studies done with sea urchins into a larger perspective. The book was, in fact, maddening to read because each bit of work is presented piecemeal, with the result that the book consists largely of a tedious litany of ‘X found A, but Y on the other hand found B’. This made for frustrating reading in the instances where truly interesting topics are being discussed and where figures are presented but barely mentioned in the text. Unfortunately this hampers an effective treatment of the subject being considered. One result is that many topics, particularly in the molecular sections, appear arbitrarily chosen and uncritically described. Also results of studies done with methods that are no longer considered adequate are given equal weight with more recent work.

But the most serious failing of this book is that it applies a deadening style to what should be vibrant living science. A student exposed to the brief sum- maries presented in this book would have difficulty in realizing that there is anything exciting going on in research on the development of sea urchins. This is particularly unfortunate, because sea- urchin embryology is presently under- going a renaissance. Sea-urchin em- bryos have long tantalized embryolo- gists because the intricacies of their early development events are so visible, because of their relatively simple mor- phology and low cellular diversity, and because so many developmental com- mitments are made by cells extremely early in development. Yet, like many of the classical problems in embryology, an understanding of these embryos is only now becoming possible because of

BioEssays Vol. 6 , No. 6 - June 1987 289

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new techniques in cell and molecular biology. Sea urchins are in fact ideal subjects for studies of such problems as cell fate specification. Cell lineages can be traced by the use of fluorescently labelled monoclonak antibody probes; the control of expression of cell-specific gene products is being studied by injection into eggs of gene constructs consisting of upstream control elements attached to ' reporter genes' ; individual cell types can be isolated and cultured in isolation; and in situ hybridization has been used to localize a wide variety of mRNAs and to show the dynamics of localized changes in gene expression in these embryos. However, none of this

has found its way into The Sea Urchin Embryo; neither has an adequate dis- cussion of exciting current studies of control of gene expression nor of morphogenetic events of gastrulation. Finally, sea urchins offer an ideal system for the study of evolutionary changes in both the molecules involved in development as well as in devel- opmental patterns (about 20% of sea urchins in fact develop in ways that are quite different from the textbook pat- tern). Again, there is only a brief mention of molecular evolution in a couple of different spots in the book.

Fortunately the current research lit- erature on sea-urchin development is

active and accessible, there are good recent reviews, and a third edition of Davidson's Gene Activity in Early Development hasrecentlybeen published. These provide thorough and up-to-date discussions of a lively field. In that context, The Sea Urchin Embryo can be seen as providing a useful summary of several aspects of the current literature, and a fine bibliography.

RUDOLF A. R A F F is at the Department of Biology, Jordan Hall 138, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA.

A selection of forthcoming events

MEETINGS (An asterisk indicates a new listing in BioChronicle)

17-19 June 1987. Triennial Symposium on the Biology of Growth Factors- Molecular Biology, Oncogenes, Signal Transduction and Clinical Implica- tions, Toronto, Canada. (Banting and Best Diabetes Centre, University of Toronto, 92 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 1L4.)

21-25 June 1987. 15th Annual Scien- tific Meeting of the American Society for Photobiology, Bal Harbor, FLA, USA. (ASP, 1340 Old Chain Bridge Road. Suite 300. McLean, VA 22 10 I . USA.)

22-26 June 1987. International Con- gress on Chemical and Biological As- pects of Vitamin B, Catalysis, Turku. Finland. (Vitamin B, Meeting. De- partment of Biochemistry. University of Turku. SF-20500 Turku. Finland.)

28 June3 July 1987. 18th FEBS Meeting, Ljubljana. Yugoslavia. (Secretariat of the 18th FEBS Meet- ing. J . Stephan Institute. Department of Biochemistry. Jarnona 39. 61000 Yugoslavia . )

29 June2 July 1987. Fifth Inter- national Symposium on Platinum and Other Metal Coordination Compounds in Cancer Chemotherapy, Padua.

Italy. (Prof M . Nicolini. Diparti- mento di Scienze Farmaceutiche, Via Margolas, 35131 Padova. Italy.)

*2-3 July 1987. Nutwe's 9th Inter- national Conference and Exhibition: Plant and Animal Biotechnology, London, UK. (Nature, 4 Little Essex St, London WX2R 3LF, UK.)

*5-9 July 1987. Second International Symposium on Nitrate Assimilation - Molecular and Genetic Aspects, St Andrews, Scotland, UK. (Dr J. L. Wray, Plant Molecular Genetics Unit, Sir Harold Mitchell Building, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9TH, UK.)

6-8 July 1987. BIOINTERACTIONS '87 - Surfaces of Biomaterials/ Biotechnology. Cambridge. U K . (Ms. Mary Korndorffer, Conference Organizer, B 1 0 1 N T E R ACT I ON S '87. Butterworth Scientific Ltd.. PO Box 63. Westbury House. Bury S t . . Guildford. Surrey GL'2 5BH. U K . )

6 1 1 July 1987. IXth International Symposium on Clycoconjugates, Lille. France. (Secretariat. Symposium lnternationale sur Les Glycoconju- gues. Universite des Sciences et Tech- niques de Lille. Flandres-Artois Laboratoires de Chimie Biologique. 59655 Villenruve d'Ascq Cedex. France.)

*7-11 July 1987. Third Annual Meeting on Oncogenes, Frederick, MD, USA. (Ms Margaret Fanning, Conference Coordinator, PRI, NCI-Frederick Cancer Research Facility, Frederick, MD 21701-1013, USA.)

12-15 July 1987. An International Symposium and Workshop on Vero- cytotoxin-producing Infections, Tor- onto, Canada. (Conference Office. Continuing Education, Faculty of Medicine. University of Toronto, 150 College Street. Room 116. Toronto. Ontario, Canada M5S IA8.)

12-17 July 1987. XVIII International Conference on Chronobiology, Leiden, The Netherlands. (Mrs A. J . Goosen-Maartens, Dept. of Physi- ology, PO Box 9604. 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands.)

17-22 July 1987. Vl l l Symposium International de Biotechnologie, Paris. France. (Societe Franpise de Micro- biologie, 25. rue du Docteur Roux, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France.)

2-6 August 1987. International Sympo- sium on the Structure, Function, and Regulation of Membrane Proteins, Stansstad, Switzerland. (Dr Heini Murer, Physiologisches Institut, Uni- versitat Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland.)

3-7 August 1987. Differentiation of Normal and Neoplastic Cells, Boulder, Colorado, USA. (The 1987 Fifth International Conference on Differ- entiation of Normal and Neoplastic Cells, Office of Conference Services, Department of Housing, University of Colorado, 500 30th St., Boulder, Colorado 80309-0454, USA.)

%I5 August 1987. VIlth International Congress of Virology, Edmonton. Alberta. Canada. (Dr. K . Charbon- neau. V11 International Congress of Virology. National Research Council