This book is a collection of papers presented at the International Symposium BIOTECH RIA '88 entitled "Molecular Probes: Technology and Medical Applications," which was held in Florence, Italy, during April 11-13, 1988. The main thrust of this meeting seems to have been an exploration of the various applications of molecular probes to problems in medicine. Accordingly, the book is organized into three sections which discuss the uses of molecular probes in genetic diseases, infectious diseases, and solid tumors, respectively. I thoroughly enjoyed this volume because of the breadth of the subject matter it covers and despite the lack of detail in the individual reports. This book is a harbinger of the excitement that is to come from molecular methods.
The promise of contemporary molecular genetics is to obtain the sequence of the entire human genome. This endeavor will not only identify each human gene, but enable scientists to produce reagents to probe each of them. These probes could be the genomic sequences, expressed genes, messenger RNA's, or monoclonal antibodies directed at specific peptides. This will be a boon to the genetic epidemiologist who is interested in "the etiology, distribution, and control of disease in groups of relatives and with inherited causes of disease in populations" [Morton, 19821. The author of this definition was careful to include both biological and cultural determinants of inheritance. Now the definition requires expansion to include both somatic and germ-line changes under biological "inheritance." The papers in this volume are an excellent reflection of what genetic epidemiology can become.
The first section of this book is neo-classical human genetics. There are papers on the detection of DNA polymorphic markers, on molecular techniques such as the polymerase chain reaction, and on the application of these techniques to genetically map and elucidate the genetic basis of beta-thalassemias, Huntington's chorea, adult polycystic kidney disease, Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy, hyperlipidemias, Wilson's disease, neurofibromatosis, and affective disorders. The majority of these papers are concerned with genetic mapping of the disease locus with the eventual aim of iden-