Genetic Engineering — Principles and Methods (Vol. 20)

. Jane K. Setlow (ed.). Plenum Press, New York. 1998. Pp. 292. Price $95.00, hardback. ISBN 0 306 45911 6.

In medical circles, there is an old adage that runs something to the effect that: ‘The specialist is at the risk of being everything to nobody; whereas the general practitioner runs the risk of being nothing to everybody.’ Unfortunately, this text comes dreadfully close to falling into the latter category. Genetic Engineering: Principles and Methods is a collection of reviews that strives to provide something for everyone and, in doing so, ends up in being of limited use to most people, be they specialists or generalists.

The central problem with this collection is not in the quality of the reviews themselves. The reviews are, on the whole, well-written and highly informative. The problem lies in the fact that apparently there has been an editorial decision to collect reviews from many diverse fields. Consequently, the subject matter ranges from starch synthesis, to signal transduction of motion and antigen recognition, to the use of antisense in Dictyostelium, to the cloning and expression of large cDNAs from mammals. While all of these reviews are quite good, the consequence of combining them all in one volume is that there is really no focus to the collection as a whole.

The problem with the volume is not just that it is a disparate collection of reviews. It also lies in the fact that the reviews are actually quite specific and detailed. They are obviously intended for specialists in the same field as the authors who wrote them. The problem that this creates is obvious. For example, although not beyond the realm of possibility, it is unlikely that someone interested in gleaning information about monoterpene biosynthesis from this collection will also be intent on possessing a review on retroviral cDNA integration. Perhaps I am underestimating the wide-ranging interests of most biologists, but in this day and age of highly scrutinized library acquisitions it does seem unlikely that such an unfocused set of reviews will find an audience.

The pity about this collection is that it detracts from the quality of the reviews themselves and from the hard work that the volume editor has obviously put into the production of this volume. The series editors would be well-advised to reconsider the editorial policy and aim to generate individual volumes that collect a series of reviews that cover one, more focused, topic. Given the quality of the reviews they have been able to collect thus far, it is likely that better focused collections would have the audience they deserve.