Book Reviews

This book is composed of two rather unintegrated parts: ‘Biosynthesis of Cellulose’ and ‘Cellulose Structure’. Part one, written by Tarchevsky, shows clearly that at present, writing a monograph is an almost impossible task. Tarchevsky is an expert in photosynthesis, and the chapters dealing with photosynthetic protoplasts are interesting but cover only a small part of the topics in the book. The chapters dealing with cell wall ultrastructure, putative cellulose synthesizing complexes in the plasma membrane, and the influence of microtubules on cellulose deposition are full of misinterpretations of the existing literature. The Russian original may serve the purpose of introducing western developments to Russian scientists, but for western students better sources are available. I am not an expert on the topic in part two, written by Marchenko, on the supramolecular organization as the general basis of the morphological structure of cellulose. Still, I doubt whether it represents a balanced overview of the field today. This part contains 239 references, almost all of them from Russian authors, 160 of which are from the sixties and seventies, and only 36 from the eighties.