Book Reviews

The content of this book is based on a meeting organized by the Environmental Physiology Group of the Society for Experimental Biology, held in April 1992. However, the book is not a mere collection of camera-ready papers. It is properly typeset, contains good quality figures and photographs, and includes a useful index. The reason that the book is reviewed rather late is not delay in publication, since the book was published shortly after the meeting. The delay in reviewing was due to colleagues borrowing the book too often to allow proper reading by me. The first chapters deal with photosynthetic carbon metabolism and phloem loading. S.C. Huber and colleagues describe the regulation of sucrose synthesis in leaves, especially focusing on the regulation of the activity of sucrose phosphate synthase. Williams and Cobb describe the peculiar phenomenon of chloroplasts in animals: certain marine molluscs acquire and retain functional algal chloroplasts within their digestive cells. In this review the authors present a comparison between the metabolism of the chloroplasts within the alga and within the animal host.