Book and Media Review pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Review of Metals and Life Lawton Shaw* Centre for Science, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Alberta T9S 3A3, Canada chemistry. For example, the crystal structure of NaCl is used as a central example, with large, beautiful figures, even though it is completely irrelevant to biological systems, for reasons that should be obvious. A subsection on solubility products offers silver chloride as the only example. Again, this example has little or no relevance to biological systems. Bizarrely, the subsection on crystal formation includes two pages on Debye−Hückel theory without even an attempt to show how this has anything to do with crystal formation. To explain why compounds are insoluble and crystals grow, it would have made sense to discuss solvation and lattice enthalpies, which the book does not. And, most unfortunately, the chapter contains only a brief statement about calcium carbonate and marine organisms, even though the secretion of calcium carbonate by corals is a vital area of current research because of climate change and ocean acidification. (For a review of this subject, see ref 5.) The section on electron transport was disappointing. No mention is made of the theory of electron transfer (i.e., Marcus theory), which cripples the section by limiting discussion to a few overgeneralizations followed by a superficial review of a few examples of electron transfer reactions of proteins. This weakness extends to the coverage of photosynthesis, which is far too short. In fact, any standard molecular biology text will provide deeper coverage of electron transfers in photosystems I and II than Metals and Life. The pedagogical elements of this book are extremely weak. In-text questions are far too simple and at times frustrating because they tend to be at the very lowest level of learning activity, knowledge recall, usually of facts from the paragraph that precedes the question. End-of-chapter questions, which are posted online, are also not up to par. There are between 4 and 7 end-of-chapter questions per chapter. If these were high quality study problems, the small number would be acceptable. This is not the case. By my count, one-third of the end-ofchapter questions are multiple choice. Many of the multiplechoice questions are of the type, “Identify which of the following is correct.” Fill-in-the-blank, ordering, and matching questions were also present. These question types are simply unheard of in senior undergraduate chemistry courses. Furthermore, the remaining questions are simply not challenging enough for this level. Metals and Life would be of little use as a course textbook outside of this one Open University course, where students are given other materials to work with. Professors who wish to teach bioinorganic chemistry would almost certainly opt for one of the other texts that are available. Metals and Life might serve as a general interest book, but that is all.
Metals and Life, edited by Eleanor Crabb and Elaine Moore. Royal Society of Chemistry Books: Cambridge, U.K., 2010. 226 pp. IBSN 978-1849730594 (softcover). $40.00.
B
ioinorganic chemistry is the study of the chemistry of metals in biological systems. The field includes research into the uptake of metals into organisms, control of metal ion concentrations, the role of metals in maintaining protein structure, electron transfer reactions of metalloproteins, and so on. Courses in bioinorganic chemistry are usually at the senior undergraduate or graduate level, because the topics require significant prerequisite knowledge in inorganic chemistry, in particular, coordination chemistry. Existing textbooks in bioinorganic chemistry include Principles of Bioinorganic Chemistry by Lippard and Berg,1 and Biological Inorganic Chemistry: Structure and Reactivity by Bertini et al.2 Both of these texts are well organized, cover the full breadth of bioinorganic chemistry, and are written by experts in the field. The book Metals and Life is part of an Open University (UK) course of the same name3 that is offered as a final-stage course in a B.Sc. (Hon) Natural Sciences degree. An Open University student would receive course print materials (including the book under review), online materials, and tutor support. The course Web site lists the Shriver and Atkins Inorganic Chemistry text4 as suggested background reading before starting the course. This is reasonable for a senior undergraduate course in this subject. So, with this context for the book, and knowing the Open University’s reputation for strong distance education pedagogy, I expected that this book was going to be a real treat. I was optimistic that perhaps it could be used to build a distancedelivered bioinorganic chemistry course at my own institution. Unfortunately, Metals and Life failed to meet these expectations. The coverage of material is quite good in some places. For example, the opening chapters have good coverage of acid− base properties of amino acids with respect to acting as metal ligands, which is a great way to start a book on bioinorganic chemistry. The sections on metal uptake and storage are interesting and well written. The graphics are of excellent quality throughout the book. The extra information boxes are appropriate and would stimulate the interest of students. However, the book has a few major flaws. The biomineralization chapter is the weakest in the entire book. This is unfortunate because of the importance of this topic. The most “bioinorganic” parts of this chapter are the very short introductory section on the repair of bone, a short section on the structure of mammalian teeth, and an interesting section on iron oxides in biological systems. The remainder of the chapter is about crystal structures, unit cells, solubility of ionic compounds, and crystal growth ratesall from a pure inorganic perspective with little direct relevance to bioinorganic © 2013 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed400065b | J. Chem. Educ. 2013, 90, 277−278
Journal of Chemical Education
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Book and Media Review
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected].
REFERENCES
(1) Lippard, S. J.; Berg, J. M. Principles of Bioinorganic Chemistry; University Science Books: Mill Valley, CA, 1994. (2) Bertini, I.; Gray, H. B.; Stiefel, E. I.; Valentine, J. S. Biological Inorganic Chemistry: Structure and Reactivity; University Science Books: Mill Valley, CA, 2007. (3) S347Metals and Life (Open University Course). http://www3. open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/s347.htm (accessed Jan 2013). (4) Shriver, D. F.; Atkins, P. W.; Overton, T. L.; Rourke, J. P.; Weller, M. T.; Armstrong, F. A. Inorganic Chemistry; W. H. Freeman and Company: New York, 2006. (5) Tambutté, S.; Holcomb, M.; Ferrier-Pagès, C.; Reynaud, S.; Tambutté, É.; Zoccola, D.; Allemand, D. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 2011, 408, 58−78.
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dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed400065b | J. Chem. Educ. 2013, 90, 277−278
