Nicolson, Rasmussen, De Petrocellis) ; V. Neural differentiation (Frank, 

 Macagno) 



The title of this book should have contained the word "development". It 

 is based on a symposium held in Woods Hole, Mass. in September 1976 and is 

 one of those few symposium volumes that are sure to leave a lasting mark. 

 All contributions are short to medium-length reviews of very recent work in 

 a limited area, but they were all obviously prepared with great care and 

 are well integrated by cross-referencing. A great variety of mostly verte- 

 brate cells and tissues pass in review, on which the most modern methods 

 are brought to bear . 



The book is produced with exemplary care and illustrated, among other 

 things, with a host of beautiful half-tones. 



85. 



R.A.LERNER and D.BERGSMA, eds. 1978. THE MOLECULAR BASIS OF CELL-CELL INTER- 

 ACTION 



Liss, New York. Birth Defects: Original Article Series, vol.14, 2. 

 XVIII, 566 pp., 255 figs., 53 tabs., subject index. $ 58.00 



Contents (abridged): I. Cell-surface membrane complex (3 papers); II. Or- 

 ganelles and supraraolecular assemblies (4); III. Cell surface proteins (8) ; 

 IV. Cell-cell interactions (9); V. Communicating cell systems (10); VI. 

 Cell patterning (2) 



More than one third of the 36 papers in this conference report are of 

 direct interest to developmental biologists. This reflects the fact that cell 

 interactions (why is the ugly phrase "cell-cell interaction" increasingly 

 used?) are often best studied in developing systems. 



The conference took place some time during 1977 in La Jolla, CA and the 

 large majority of contributors are Americans. The papers vary widely in 

 scope; most can be characterised as progress reports. Many developmental 

 biologists will also be interested in the "non-developmental" papers, partic- 

 ularly those dealing with lymphocytes and histocompatibility antigens: the 

 latter are increasingly suspected to have much more profound functions than 

 those expressed in graft rejection alone. 



The papers of primary interest to our readers are in sections IV-VI. The 

 last section is made up by two brief reviews by Bryant (epimorphic fields) 

 and Wolpert (chick limb development) . Section V has no less than six papers 

 on cellular slime moulds, some of them unconnected with the theme of the con- 

 ference (genetics and gene expression) . Section IV has a long paper by Boyse 

 and Cantor on immunogenetical aspects of biological communication, which 

 contains most interesting speculations. Other papers are on the T-locus of 

 the mouse, on "cell-adhesion molecules" in chick embryos, and on fertilisa- 

 tion in mammals and sea urchins. 



The volume is well produced and illustrated. 



86. 



B.I. LORD, C.S.POTTEN and R.J.COLE, eds. 1978. STEM CELLS AND TISSUE HOMEO- 

 STASIS 



Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, etc. Symp. Brit. Soc. Cell Biol. no. 2. 

 VIII, 368 pp., 73 figs., 20 tabs., combined taxonomic and subject index. 

 £ 18.50 



As Holtzer says on page 2 of this volume, the "problems of the stem cell 

 are a paradigm for the basic problems of cell diversification". This sympo- 

 sium, which was held in Manchester in April 1977, was unusual in that many 

 developing systems were considered from the viewpoint of stem cells (or 

 rather "cell lineage") which are not usually so considered, e.g. developing 

 and regenerating limbs (Wolpert), the mammalian embryo (Papaioannou et at.), 



218 



