Progress in Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry

Inevitably, recent developments, for example in the field of messenger RNA, are not considered. However, the inclusion by many authors of material unpublished at the time of presentation has tended to keep this symposium up to date in spite of the delay in publication. The papers range from general review articles to summaries of work in individual laboratories, and they are grouped under the headings "Nucleic Acids," "Nucleic Acids and Proteins," "Protein Conformation and Sequence," "Controlling Mechanism and Enzyme Synthesis," "Controlling Mechanisms and Biochemical Alterations Induced by Viral Nucleic Acids," and "Ribosomes and Protein Synthesis." Although these topics must be of fundamental importance to an understanding of tumor cells, their application to cancer research has hardly begun. As a reflection of this, only a small proportion of the articles are directly concerned with problems of neoplasia. Among these are the chapters by Van R. Potter on the deletion hypothesis of carcinogenesis, Harris Busch and co-workers on nuclear proteins of neoplastic tissues, R. Dulbecco and M. Vogt on the integration of the virus genome in virus-induced neoplastic cells, and Stanfield Rogers on Shope virus-induced arginase. On the other hand, the majority of the papers will appeal to biochemists who are interested in nucleic acids and viruses independently of their possible applications. In particular, the review articles will be enjoyed by specialists seeking recent information on topics related to their own. This book will interest a wide audience, although it does not discuss many of the questions suggested by its title. H. G. KLEMPERER