BIOMEMBRANES CELL MEMBRANES: BIOCHEMISTRY, CELL BIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY

G. WEISSMANN and R. CLAIBORNE, EDS.

Summary: If in 1953 the paper of Watson and Crick in Nature on the structure of DNA marks the birth of molecular biology, then surely in 1972 the paper of S. J. Singer and G.L. Nicolson on the fluid mosaic model of cell membrane must herald in a period of membrane molecular biology. For "suddenly it is all membrane," so states the first sentence in the foreword of this beautifully illustrated (by Bunji Tagawa of Scientific American fame) and expertly written book on animal cell membrane.

          The central theme of "Cell Membranes: Biochemistry, Cell Biology and Pathology" is the Singer.Nicolson paradigm of a biological membrane: a shallow oily sea of lipid in which float buoys of protein, singly or in patches, some with antennae of carbohydrate to probe for the cell environment. This enticingly simple picture has found access into such popular magazines as the National Geographic, which recently ran an article on the "New Biology" in which the Singer-Nicolson membrane model was featured. How this concept approximates the real world is expanded in twenty-six individual articles contributed by such membranologists as D. Chapman, P. Cautrecasas, J.A. Lucy, E. Racker and S.J. Singer.

          The book is divided into three sections. The first deals with the structure and physical properties of natural and artificial membranes, including topics on lipid dynamics, orientation of membrane protein and cell fusion. In the second section are found sixteen chapters on the structure and physiology of various membranous organelles, including plasma membrane, endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondrial membrane. The emphasis is to offer a structural basis for such phenomena as intra. cellular communication, ionic transport, hormonal response and organelle biogenesis. Not all articles go beyond describing electron micrograph features, but the chapters by G.D. Pappas, W.R. Loewenstein and E. Racker on cell function, cellular communication and inner mitochondrial membrane, respectively, manage to bring ideas contained in the first section to bear upon their particular problems. The book closes with six chapters on selected areas of pathology where modern membrane research has already provided a molecular understanding to such human disease as gout and erythrocyte disorders.

          To students and researchers of membrane biology, this collection of essays will help ont only to crystallize their current notions but to bring into highlight those

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H.P. Publishing Co., Inc., New York, N.Y., 1975, pp 283, ISBN 0-913800-06-6, $17. 95.