BSCB Newsletter, Winter 2001

Book Reviews

Endocrine Cell Culture
Successful Scientific Writing
Neuronal Growth Cones
More books for review

Endocrine Cell Culture: Handbooks in Practical Animal Cell Biology
Edited by Stephen Bidey
£52.50
Hardback, 166 pages. Cambridge University Press; ISBN: 0521593999

If you are thinking of moving into a new area of in vitro endocrine cell biology, then this is the ideal manual to get you started. At first glance it's a slim volume, but it contains all the necessary detail to establish primary cultures from a wide range of endocrine tissues. Each chapter offers a comprehensive list of materials and reagents, a clear step-by-step protocol that covers every manoeuvre from start to finish, and a trouble-shooting guide for what to do when things go wrong, as they often do with culture work.

A very welcome feature is the unusually high number of illustrations for a book of this type. These consist of a selection of simple but handy anatomical diagrams (e.g. where to find your bovine adrenal glands after the steer has been sawn in half) and a good number of photographs to illustrate both the dissected tissue and, most importantly, what your cells should look like if you've succeeded in establishing the correct culture.

Anyone who works on a reduced budget will appreciate the money-saving tips, such as when and how cell culture materials can be recycled. I also liked the personal touch of some authors, who balanced 'we use this protease because...' with 'some colleagues say they get good results with...'.

Best of all, this book succeeds, in only a few pages, in pre-empting many of your questions by going beyond a 'how to' approach and giving you a surprising amount of 'why this bit is important'.

Crystal clear cell culture advice. You'll want to wrap it in plastic and keep it on the lab bench.

Gareth Cuttle, Departamento de Ciências Fisiológicas, Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de sansta Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil