Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Inorganic Biochemistry, An Introduction; 2nd Edition J. A. Cowan. VCH: New York, 1997. ISBN 0-471-18895-6. $59.00.
Bioinorganic chemistry is a relatively new, vigorously pursued, vibrant research area. Some 20 years ago (1977), I published a book titled Bioinorganic Chemistry, An Introduction, which was of a size similar to this book under review. “Bioinorganic chem” or “inorganic biochem”: which is proper? The emphasis is presumably on the inorganic chemistry of biological systems in the case of “bioinorganic”, whereas it is on biochemistry of inorganic substances in the other. However, the difference is subtle and which to use seems to be a matter of almost arbitrary choice. Interestingly, though, British scientists (this author is one) seem to prefer “inorganic biochemistry”, whereas the majority of chemists on this side of the Atlantic use “bioinorganic chemistry”. As the scope of the field is very wide, it would be difficult to adequately cover its entirety in a small volume like this. Therefore, an author has to make a choice as to what topics be covered, and this author rightly says that the book is illustrative rather than comprehensive. What the author decided to cover is as follows. Chapter 1. Fundamentals of Inorganic Biochemistry Chapter 2. Experimental Methods Chapter 3. Transport and Storage Chapter 4. Metalloproteins and Metalloenzymes: (I) Oxygen Carriers and Hydrolases Chapter 5. Metalloproteins and Metalloenzymes: (II) Redox Chemistry Chapter 6. Alkali and alkaline Earth Metals Chapter 7. Metals in the Regulation of Biochemical Events Chapter 8. Cell Toxicity and Chemotherapeutics Chapter 9. Metal Complexes as Probes of Structure and Reactivity Chapt. 10. Case Studies
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The first two chapters cover the fundamentals and occupy about one third of the book. They do not give enough details to be useful for beginners, but would serve as a useful review of the material for those who have learned the basics already. I am not sure whether it is wise to use this much space for this kind of discourse at the expense of some other topics that might have been included instead. For example, little is mentioned about the fascinating recent developments in Cu, Mo, and W biochemistry. The idea of combining two disparate types of reactions in a single chapter (4) is questionable. Separating them might have given a better sense about the basic chemical logic of biochemical reactions. Chapter 10, “Case Studies”, is an interesting idea affording an opportunity to delve into the details of chosen topics. Two things mar this effort, however. The first is an unfortunate timing. The first item in this chapter is cytochrome c oxidase, for which X-ray crystallographic structural determinations have been published recently, perhaps right after the completion of the manuscript. This omission of reference to such a literature is not the author’s fault, but at least the references might have been added during the proofing stage. The second flaw is a redundancy. MerR protein and bleomycin, the other items in the chapter, are also discussed in other parts of the text, though the author might have a good reason to discuss them again. Aside from the quibbles above, the chapters are well written. One of the winning points of this book is the problems at the end of each chapter. The majority of them are taken directly from original literature and are presumably intended to give additional material to supplement the text. The book is thus apparently intended to be used as a textbook for beginning “inorganic biochemists” at the graduate level and would indeed be appropriate for that purpose. However, whether “summary” at the end of each section is useful for this level of instruction is questionable. Ei-Ichiro Ochiai Department of Chemistry Juniata College Huntingdon, PA 16652
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 76 No. 4 April 1999 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
