books: a delightful read

Books

Learning about Protein Purification

Protein Purification Jan-Christer Janson and Lars Rydén John Wiley & Sons 605 Third Ave. New York, NY 10158 1998, 679 pp., $74.95

The second edition of Protein Purification is a welcome one among the many text­books in this area that have been published in this decade. The heightened curiosity about proteins followed in the wake of the human genome project and the growth of molecular biology, which made protein production and availability a much easier task. This in turn led to an explosion of new work in the biotechnology industry as well as in basic research.

The book is divided into three sections. Part I is a short introduction to protein pu­rification, Part II is an overview of available chromatographic techniques, and Part III is an overview of electrophoretic methods. Part I is short but well written and tells the reader what protein purification work is all about. This section should be very helpful to students and others starting in the field of protein purification.

In Part II, the introductory chapter covers all the basic concepts for under­standing various types of chromatogra­phy. The following chapters give exten­sive coverage of anion and cation chroma­tography and an excellent theoretical and technical explanation of reverse-phase HPLC. I particularly liked the detailed explanations and tables on ion-pairing

agents, which are often lacking in other works. Also, each chromatographic tech­nique has a few applications, and some rarely used separations, such as covalent chromatography, are discussed.

Part III includes another excellent intro­ductory chapter on the art of electrophore­sis for the inexperienced. Every type of electrophoresis is described with a good theoretical, practical, and application write-up. My only criticism—which is minor—is that in the chapter on protein mapping, the role of mass spectrometry could have been better emphasized.

Reviewed by Amina S. Woods, Johns Hop­kins School of Medicine

A Delightful Read

Spot Test Analysis, 2nd Edition Ervin Jungreis John Wiley & Sons 605 Third Ave. New York, NY 10158 1998, 361pp., $69.95

This book is an excellent review of quick and practical methods for the analysis of samples. It is a "must have" reference for any professional who practices analytical chemistry. The organization of the chap­ters is logical. As an educational tool, Spot Test Analysii gives thorough backgrrund and procedural information for each tech­

nique. In those sections where the reader might need even more information, an adequate number of references are pro­vided. The quality and timeliness of the information presented is outstanding, es­pecially with the inclusion of more immu­noassay techniques in this edition. A nota­ble characteristic of the book is that it is very easy to follow the steps in the proce­dures presented, although some skill in the area of organic and inorganic chemi­cal synthesis is required to fully appreci­ate each technique. Finally, the indexing of the different subjects covered in the book is good.

It was delightful to read this book, and I highly recommend it. The scope, how­ever, can be intimidating, especially since the book covers a broad number of sub­jects ranging from geochemistry to clini­cal chemistry. This scope is also one of the book's strength. The depth of cover­age of any one area is limited because of space, but it allows the analyst to look at procedures in diverse fields and see if they can be applied to the problems at hand. The majority of the techniques pre­sented in the book can be performed with off-the-shelf reagents, which are found in most analytical chemistry laboratories. However there some minor incon­sistencies in the listing of the of commercial sources for assay kits There were names for some of the tests but not for others

I found miscellaneous typographical and grammatical errors, but these do not detract from the fundamental utility of the book. The most serious mistake is the misclassification of some non-immuno-chemical tests as immunochemical tests in section 3.38, such as the test for ethyl­ene oxide and the test strip for leucine aminopeptidase.

Reviewed by Bruce Hammock and Horacio Kido, University of California-Davis

742 A Analytical Chemistry News & Features, November 1, 1998