Current methods in cellular neurobiology, volume IV: Model systems, Edited by J.L. Barker and J.F. McKelvy. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1983. 192 pages, including index
✍ Scribed by Associate Professor James Blankenship
- Book ID
- 102383916
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1984
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 231 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0360-4012
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This is the fourth in a series of volumes that provides articles by active investigators who review recent methods or preparations in their own field which hold special promise for advancing our insights into neurobiology at the cellular level. The six chapters were selected by the editors as representing information about "systems [that] serve as useful models for establishing strategic lines of investigation into specific biological problems. " Taken individually, each of the six papers is well done. An attempt is made to acquaint the reader with the background of the method or system in use, to discuss the relevance of the model and the questions it proposes to answer, and to show the significance of the neurobiological issues the particular approach is designed to address. Each paper presents a broad, succinct review of the status of a field of research with an excellent bibliography. This volume, then, does offer a convenient and easy-to-understand overview of several areas of recent and promising neurobiological research.
H. Chica Schaller describes the extensive research of herself and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg on the isolation of four regulatory neural peptides from Hydra which promote or inhibit the growth of head or foot parts of this coelenterate. The efforts to purify and sequence the head activator peptide-present in individual organisms in amounts around g-are hardly short of heroic, and required tedious isolation procedures. This remarkable compound has also been identified in mammalian brain and must represent one of the most conserved neural peptides yet discovered. The role of this substance in higher organisms remains obscure, but in Hydra (and other coelenterates) it is necessary and sufficient to induce the growth and differentiation of the entire head region. We are strikingly reminded of the primitive, powerful role that some neural messages must play in ontogeny. Yet, this system is not likely to be adopted by many other laboratories: Hydra is not a popular research organism, and the technical methodology is not that unique (although the combination of (1) the use of excellent bioassays, (2) creative assimilation of purification schemes at micro levels, and (3) great perserverance is remarkable). Why then would this report be included as a "model"? Not because the system or even the approach will be widely imitated, but because the whole style of work, its thoroughness, precision, and development, reflects Webster's fundamental definition of model: a thing considered as a standard of excellence.