Book reviews

This book presents an up to date account of bacterial metabolism, illustrating data with clear and interesting examples. Both, scholars and students of this subject will find this book worth reading, not only because of the contents but also of the author’s style, the presentation of tables and diagrams and the pleasant type. In the first chapters the principal reactions of energy and biosynthetic metabolism have been discussed using Escherichia coli as a model organism. Then the diversity of aerobic metabolism among bacteria has been outlined. Hereafter a brief description of the regulation of the level and activity of enzymes has been given followed by a large chapter on fermentation. The last two chapters are devoted to chemolithotrophic and phototrophic metabolism and to nitrogen fixation.