Year: 2008
Type: book-review
Abstract: p. Price: 45s.Cell Calcium is the seventh title in Butterworths Molecular Biology and Medicine series.It is a welcome edition to the series, particularly for workers in the calcium field, since it brings together much information which was previously scattered among a variety of specialist journals.A short historical introduction is followed by a chapter on some of the physical and chemical properties of calcium.A useful addition to this chapter would have been a table of stability constants of calcium compounds, since, as the author notes, calcium is present mainly in bound form within the cell.The remaining chapters deal mainly with calcium in muscle cells, a subject on which the author is an authority.The role of calcium in the excitation and contraction of muscle fibres is considered in detail and the mode of action of pharmacological agents such as caffeine is discussed at some length.The book ends with a short description of some of the factors involved in the regulation of calcium concentrations inside and outside the cell.This monograph therefore provides a good account of the role of calcium in muscle physiology.However, the title of the book and the author's own preface suggest that it is intended for a rather wider audience than muscle physiologists and the limited scope of the book is therefore disappointing.More space should have been found for the now extensive work on calcium uptake by yeast cells, mammalian cancer cells and erythrocytes, on the uptake of calcium by liver mitochondria, and on the transport of calcium across the intestinal epithelium.The importance of calcium in the nerve cell and in main taining the integrity of biological membranes is now well recognised yet these topics receive only a brief mention.In view of the title of this series some reference to clinical aspects, for example, the role of calcium in arteriosclerosis and dystrophic calcification, would have been appropriate.Perhaps an adequate treatment of all these topics would require a much larger (and more expensive) book than the present one but a better balance could be achieved, even in a book of this size.The price of this book is modest by present-day standards and it is one of the shortest books in the series.There is therefore room for a moderate increase in size along the lines indicated above and this would add greatly to the book's general interest and appeal.A. Ilodgkinson, Leeds.Angewandte Biochemie und Histochcmie in der Hämatologie -Pathophy siologie der Leber -Moderne Methoden der klinischen Chemie.Ver handlungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für experimentelle Medizin.K. Loh mann (
Source: Pharmacology
DOI: 10.1159/000137188
Language: French
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4253543871