Textbook of Structural Biology

The recently published, 580-paged, book by Liljas et al.1 on structural biology is the latest, most thorough, and significant book about the structure of biological macromolecular assemblies. The first of these, published in 1969, was by Richard Dickerson and Irving Geiss on “The Structure and Action of Proteins.”2 The Dickerson and Geiss book2 was only 120 pages long and required the artist, Irving Geiss, to create the illustrations. It contained much of the essential background knowledge on protein structure and described some of the first protein structures (oxygen-carrying globins, electron transporting cytochrome, proteinases, and nucleases) that had been studied in three-dimensional atomic detail. It was essential reading for anyone interested in protein structure and function. Another noteworthy book was written by Georg Schulz and Heiner Schirmer on “Principles of Protein Structure” and was published in 19793 with 313 pages of text using only black and white illustrations. A particularly popular successor was “Introduction to Protein Structure” by Carl Branden and John Tooze,4 first published in 1991, with 302 pages fully illustrated with beautiful, colored computer-drawn figures. There have also been other publications with more limited or more technical presentations, such as “Diffraction of X-rays by Proteins, Nucleic Acids and Viruses” by Herbert Wilson published in 1966,5 or the 1962 narrative “Proteins and Nucleic Acids” by Max Perutz,6 the scientific ancestor to nearly every structural biologist of today. Now, in 2009, we have a new successor to this series that is better and bigger than any of its predecessors. Knowledge of structure has expanded exponentially. This new book covers every type of biological polymer and almost every topic relevant to life on Earth in a well-written series of chapters. Unfortunately, the absence of stereo diagrams makes some of the more complex ribbon diagrams become less useful. Not surprisingly, such an expansion of knowledge can no longer be covered by one or two authors, but required six authors with varying expertise. The fact that all the authors are Scandinavians is a consequence of the long-standing Swedish participation in developing the subject, perhaps starting with Theodor Svedberg and continuing with Bror Strandberg's participation in the determination of the first protein structures.7 A most useful vetted short list of appropriate references to reviews and some original publications is given at the end of each chapter. Some readers might have liked a more complete set of references to original work, although forming an unbiased index to the relevant literature must be an almost impossible task without hurting feelings of priority and maintaining relevance to the topic. A novel and useful feature is the technical appendages (A through F) on, for instance, prediction of secondary structure and on assignment of function. Nevertheless, at times the discussion seems a bit vague as, for example, the discussion of Table A.1 on p 486. This table shows that single, double, and triple carbon–carbon bonds are progressively shorter. Carbon–carbon bonds of order 1.5, as occur in benzene, fall nicely between single and double bonds in lengths. However, the reference to quantum mechanical calculations and the ordering in the table itself obscures the fact that this table was derived experimentally. Liljas et al.1 start with a brief but interesting introductory background describing the evolutionary processes that formed life as we know it on earth. This is followed, as in most other books of this genre, by a chapter describing the primary and secondary structure of proteins, amino acids and their restricted conformations, polypeptide main-chain dihedral angles, and a brief summary of folding topologies and domain structure. Finally, the relationship between function, structure, and evolution emerges clearly from the previous discussion. The subsequent chapter on nucleic acid conformation follows the same pattern, starting with the restriction on conformational angles in sugars, secondary structure of DNA and RNA, bulges, junctions and pseudoknots, and culminating with the structure of tRNAs, ribosomes, and ribozymes. The next, well-written and informative chapter on lipids and membranes completes the basic discussion of the chemistry of biological materials. Chapter 5 to the final Chapter 16 cover various basic biological processes such as enzymatic catalysis, transcription, translation, apoptosis, protein folding, signal transduction, motility, and immunology with a final chapter on virus structure. Although the book is copiously illustrated in beautifully executed, colored, computer-drawn figures, some of the mechanistic explanations could have been clearer by the use of easily understood chemical symbols. For instance, the book lacks a series of simple figures explaining the action of the ser-his-asp catalytic triad in proteinases such as trypsin. It would appear that we cannot yet discard our worn out volumes of Dickerson and Geiss.2 However, equally, we can no longer study structural biology without having our copy of Liljas et al.1 close at hand. The amount of information compressed into less than 600 pages is a great achievement and essential for those who wish to understand biological processes at a basic level of molecules, atoms, and their chemistry.