Amino acids in health and disease: New perspectives UCLA symposia in molecular and cellular biology, new series, vol. 55

The final four chapters are potentially more interesting to cell biologists. The first of this group, a review on effects of cytochalasins on plant and prokaryotic cells, describes effects comparable to those in animal cells on protoplasmic streaming in such ceils as Nitella, in which actin is clearly involved, but also rather a patchwork of effects (at very high concentrations) on other aspects of plant or bacterial cell function. These are disappointingly reminiscent of the phenomenological papers in the Tannenbaum volume. Perhaps some evolutionary connections will be made or some useful function stumbled upon, but it all seems hard work to me with few rational themes running through it. This criticism can also be levelled at the next chapter, which reports and reviews observations on the effects of cytochalasin H on a range of multicellular organisms, The final two chapters deal one with the effects of cytochalasins on ion channels and related phenomena and the other review aspects of their effects on cultured mammalian cells and on actin respectively. The former chapter is relatively unconvincing whilst the latter, perhaps the most familiar to most cytochalasin users, deals with the effects on the behaviour of actin in too general and uncritical a way to be very useful. The book was marked as published in 1986, although I didn't find any references subsequent to 1984. If you are very involved with this group of compounds you might ask your library to buy a copy, otherwise the price and rather idiosyncratic coverage rate makes this book a strictly national lending library option.