Trends in Biotechnology, VoL 3, No. 12, 1985

ing and brewing, leaving out hosts of minor and ancillary facts. Highlights could be covered, and principles could be given in a shorter reading ex- perience. Dr Hough doubtlessly faced this dilemma and opted for the busier style; I am personally glad he did. A text certainly would not lose much perti- nent factual value if, for example, the numerous illustrations of processing equipment had been left out. It would not be as well rounded, however; nor

would a full flavor of brewing lore be present.

Both malting and brewing are com- plex biological processes - a fact not widely appreciated by persons un- acquainted with these industries. Such readers would not be given a true picture of malting and brewing by a simplified text containing only major points and highlights. Hough's text presents very well the complexities that exist in these disciplines.

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It is, no doubt, clear by now that I find The Biotechnology of Malting and Brewing to be praiseworthy. It teaches its subject; it points the way for deeper investigations; and it is written in an appetizing manner - all in 168 pages.

W. A. HARDWICK

Materials Science and Development, Anheuser-Busch Inc., 1 Busch Place, St Louis, MO, USA.

Antiviral vaccines

APPLIED VIROLOGY

edited by Edouard Kurstak, Academic Press, 1984. $59.00/£45.50 (xxv + 518 pages) ISBN 0 12 429601 7

Akhough it is not clear from the title, Applied Virology is mainly about anti- viral vaccines. Its publication is well timed because vaccine technology is at an historical turning-point. It is note- worthy that no major industrial development in new vaccines for man has occurred since the late 1960s.

Virologists and immunologists must develop new strategies to control virus disease. The hepatitis B virus, for example, does not grow in culture, and thus genetic engineering or oligopep- tide synthesis must be used. Such modern strategies are abundantly dis- cussed in the book. The choice of the most immunogenic presentation of viral antigens and the individualization of antigenic sites critical for neutraliza- tion by antibody are essential; the well- documented example of poliovirus is dearly described.

Several chapters deal with the defini- tion of target populations in need of new vaccines (or with improved use of classical vaccines), particularly in developing countries. The efforts of the World Health Organization in defining the present status of vaccination clearly show the numerous practical problems left; for example, non-uniformity of schedules, poor delivery systems and lack of commitment from governments (which appear to be willing to spend money to treat, but not to prevent, virus diseases). Moreover, because of financial constraints, only part of the eligible population is vaccinated.

Identifying populations at risk is another important area of research, and

many of the chapters are dedicated to the epidemiology and diagnosis of viral diseases. It is particularly important for diarrhea virus, which is responsible for almost as many deaths worldwide as all the other causes combined (the annual mortality among young children is > 4 million). Animal models of immuniza- tion against gastroenteritis are described in the book. The many sero- types and agents involved clearly pre- sent a major obstacle.

Altogether, these reviews will be useful to a range of readers, mostly in infectious disease control centers, departments of agriculture and public health, hospitals and veterinary centers, especially in the developing world. Virologists will be interested,

since the book also contains good reviews on advances in antiviral chemo- therapy (a quickly evolving area) and in modern immunoassays applied in virology. Virologists and immunolo- gists will find little of academic interest in this book but might learn about the practical aspects of virology, a field that has not been well covered by recent literature. Despite such limitations the book is very welcome.

JEAN-LOUIS VIRELIZIER

Unitd d'Immunologie Pgdiatrique, H6pital Necker-Enfants Malades, 149 Rue de S~vres, 75743 Paris, Cedex 15, France.

The new world of virology

METHODS IN VIROLOGY, VOL. VIII

edited by K. Maramorosch and H. Koprowski, Academic Press, 1984. $55.00/£41.50 (xvi + 396pages)ISBN 0 12 470208 2

This is the eighth volume of the series and, together with the seventh volume published last year, is a rebirth of this useful series, which started strongly in the late 1960s with four well integrated volumes, but rather languished in the 1970s. These two latest volumes des- cribe the currently fashionable tech- niques the editors call 'the "new world" of virology'; new and more sen- sitive analytical methods, that are based mainly on serology, etectron micro- scopy and molecular biochemistry.

Studies of viral nucleic acids are the subject of the first two chapters, and they complement four on the same sub- ject in the last volume. The first, a thorough review by Raab-Traub and

Pagano, has the slightly misleading title, 'Hybridization of viral nucleic acids: newer methods on solid media and in solution', as it deals only with the nucleic acids of Epstein-Barr virus. The second is a review, by Kew, Nottay and Obijeski, of the methods of oligo- nucleotide fingerprinting of RNA molecules. This elegant method is a way of obtaining a qualitative measure of the relatedness of RNA molecules that are more than about 90% homo- logous. It has been very successfully used in ecological studies of RNA genome viruses, and a most valuable compilation of references to these studies is included in the review. However, I doubt that many more will decide to invest the time required to master this complex technique, when, for much the same effort, one could nowadays obtain more quantitative data by combining a very much simpler restriction enzyme technique (Fara- gher, Hutchison and Dalgarno Virology 141, 248-256, 1985) with nucleotide sequencing.

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Electron microscopical methods are also thoroughly reviewed in four chapters of the two latest volumes, and although three of them specifically refer to plant virus studies, they will be of value for those studying viruses of all types. Milne and Lesemann's review of 'Immunosorbent electron microscopy in plant virus studies' thoroughly modernizes Milne and Luisoni's review of the same subject in Volume 6, and Martelli and Russo's account of thin-section studies, and Milne's review of techniques for virus particle preparations in Volume 7 sets out all that the 'electron virologist' needs to know. The other electron microscopy chapter, by Mazzone,~Engler and Bahr on 'Quantitative transmission electron microscopy for the determination of mass-molecular weight of viruses' seems to me to hark back a quarter century and to be of little interest to the 'new virologists'. One could now, if one so wished, obtain the same information so much more accurately by determin- ing the primary, tertiary and quaternary structure of the constituent macromolecules of virus particles; indeed, inexplicably, the authors did not compare their estimates of molecular mass for tobacco mosaic virus particles with the mass calculated from published sequence data.

The chapters by Heibert, Purcifull

and Christie on 'Purification and immunological analyses of plant viral inclusion bodies', and by Daubert and Bruening on 'Detection of genome- linked proteins of plant and animal viruses' are very useful collations of the methods used in these active areas of research. Heibert et al. state here again their long-held view that characterizing, by light microscopy, the inclusions in infected tissue is 'useful for diagnostic purposes'. Unfortunately this relatively simple technique is rarely used by diag- nostic plant virologists, but perhaps would be more widely used if data on diagnostic differences were presented in the form of well-illustrated keys or diagnostic tables.

The concise chapter by Leon Rosen on the 'Use of mosquitoes to detect and propagate viruses' describes how mos- quitoes, notably individuals of the pre- dacious genus Toxorhynchites, may be used to isolate and propagate viruses. This method combined with new sensitive non-radioactive probing methods should greatly increase the range of techniques available to the. field 'arbovirologist'.

The chapter by Prusiner and nine colleagues on 'Prions: methods for assay, purification, and characteri- zation' illustrates the difficulty faced by editors aiming to select topics for review that are in the forefront of

Trends in Biotechnology, Vol. 3, No. 12, 1985

research, yet fully confirmed. Prusiner and his colleagues explain, in one of the longest chapters of this volume, how to purify, from animals suffering from the disease called scrapie, an 'agent', which is able to induce the disease in inocu- lated animals. They call this agent a 'prion' because its properties are more like those of proteins, than nucleopro- teins or nucleic acids. However, work by others, reviewed by Robertson, Branch and Dahlberg (Cell 40, 725-727, 1985), has shown that the major protein in prion preparations is probably encoded by a gene of the host; a finding that does not explain why there are several stable and distinct strains of scrapie. Thus, exactly what one would obtain using the methods described in this chapter is still a matter of debate!

So, in summary, Methods in Virology has undergone a useful revitalization in the last couple of years. Most of the reviews in the two latest volumes live up to the editors' ambitions to describe the methods of the 'new world' of virology, and will be of great value for working virologists.

ADRIAN GIBBS

Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.