Advances in Neuroendocrinology

It seems amazing that a research worker as prolific as Dr. Michelson should have been able to find time to write this excellent volume with its more than two thousand references. It is admirable that a publisher should be able to print a book in 1963 in which so many late 1962 references are included. The degree of completeness with which the organic and physical chemistry of nucleosides, nucleotides, and of their polymers is covered is very impressive. Methods of synthesis, methods of isolation and fractionation, radiation effects, methods of polymerization, denaturation and renaturation, solution properties, molecular weight determinations and numerous other topics are discussed with complete authority. Briefer sections dealing with the biosynthesis of nucleotides and polynucleotides and with the biology of nucleic acids should be useful primarily to organic chemists entering this field. Two minor and one major criticism can be made. The section dealing with the work of Schramm with ethyl polyphosphate as a polymerization catalyst expresses more enthusiasm than this reagent appears to warrant. The use of the old British system of numbering pyrimidines may be a nuisance to some American workers. A really serious flaw is the lack of an adequate subject index, a lack which is thoroughly irritating in a book which will be used primarily as a reference text. It is true that the author index is very complete, but since some authors' names are followed by dozens of page references, the work involved in writing the author index could have been spent more usefully in expanding the vestigial subject index. remain remarkably current, for in the main, they are well organized, perceptive and literate review articles. The authors are among the foremost in their specialized areas, and because of the "review" perspective of their articles, the physician unfamiliar with neuroendocrinology can be gently introduced to each topic before advancing with the writer to the frontiers of neural-endocrine research. A commendable feature of the longer articles is the frequent insertion of labeled interim summaries, enabling the reader first to scan a chapter before seeking more thorough digestion of the material. Previously unreported experiments constitute a very small fraction of this volume, and are largely to be found in the discussion section following each formal presentation. In his analysis of "Neurohypophyseal Secretions and their Origins," W. H. Sawyer expertly distills into 9 fascinating pages what is known of the formation, transportation, storage, and release …