Molecular and cellular biophysics, CRC Series in Pure and Applied Physics, by Jack A. Tuszynski
This is an ambitious text. The treatment is described on the book’s cover as, ‘Logically organized from small-scale (molecular) to large-scale (cellular) systems, the text first defines life, discussing the scientific controversies between mechanists and vitalists, the characteristics of living things and the evolution of life. It then delves into molecular structures, including nucleic acids, DNA, RNA, interatomic interactions and hydrogen bonds. After looking at these smaller systems, the author probes the larger cellular structures. He examines the cytoplasm, the cytoskeleton, chromosomes, mitochondria, motor proteins and more. The book concludes with discussions on biophysical processes, including oxidative phosphorylation, diffusion, bioenergetics, conformational transitions in proteins, vesicle transport, subcellular structure formation and cell division’. The ‘references at the end of each chapter’ and the ‘many illustrations to enhance comprehension of the material’ are also highlighted. For such a wide-ranging text, offered as presenting the current state of knowledge in each area with references to original sources, the reader can reasonably wish to be assured that the material presented is accurate and the conclusions drawn are the product of informed and mature analysis. Sadly, this book cannot be recommended as meeting these criteria. There are serious factual errors, the organisation of references is chaotic and likely to prove extremely frustrating, illustrations are variable in style and quality, and many which do not appear to be original to this text lack specific references which would allow further information about features in them to be obtained. The text also suffers from the order in which topics are treated, most obviously in the positioning of the account of the origin of life and discussions of proposals for artificial life in Chapter 1 (‘What is life?’). While it may be attractive ‘to begin at the beginning’ current models for the origin of life rest heavily on properties of nucleic acids and proteins, including in particular, relatively recent knowledge of catalytic properties of RNA. Since the structure and function of these molecules are treated at length in Chapter 2 (‘What are the molecules of life?’) and in Chapter 3 (‘What is a biological cell?’) it would have been more useful to have discussed the roles they may have played in the origin of life and how their capabilities to store, copy and express information might be mimicked artificially in Chapter 4 (‘What are life processes?’). The rambling and repetitive style characterising much of this text is particularly apparent in the discussion of the basic features of the properties of amino acids and their role in determining protein structure – a subject already well-rehearsed with excellent treatments in the literature. Confusion is also likely to be caused by the categorization in