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Kinesin Protocolsedited by Isabelle VernosHumana Press, 2001. $89.50 (258 pages)ISBN 0 89603 766 5Everyone will be familiar with this situation: you wish to perform a specific experiment, you go to your library and search the ‘Material and Methods’ sections of the relevant literature – but only find a heavily condensed version or are referred to a previous paper. At this point, you have three options: you trace back through the journals to the original paper (which is tedious), make a guess at the protocol (which is risky) or you ask a friend who knows the procedure (who might be hard to find).If you are lucky enough to work in the kinesin field, now you have a fourth choice: check out Isabelle Vernos’ Kinesin Protocols. Of course, the selection of protocols cannot be comprehensive, but the book covers a large variety of techniques. It starts with six protocols for how to get kinesin protein in your hands. Kinesin purification procedures from native and recombinant sources as well as strategies for the discovery of novel representatives from various organisms are presented. Four chapters describe functional assays for kinesin using biochemical (ATPase assay) and microscopic methods (motility and microtubule-destabilization assays). As kinesins function as vesicle transporters and spindle motors, approaches to study the cell-biological role of kinesin-related proteins in intracellular motility, mitotic and meiotic processes, with the help of immunological and genetic methodologies, are discussed in six contributions. Two additional chapters describe how to find kinesin-associated proteins and how to use kinesin as a marker for the microtubule cytoskeleton. Finally, two contributions describe structural characterization by crystallography and electron microscopy.The authors of the 20 contributions are renowned scientists in the field, and therefore the protocols are of excellent quality. Each chapter comprises a general introduction, a materials and methods section and a very helpful ‘notes’ part. Often, it's the subtle details that determine the quality and reliability of experiments, such as correctly preparing the reagents and thoroughly controlling the conditions during fixation. These minutiae are usually missing in the literature – but are included in this handbook and thus make it an especially valuable source of information. As motility phenomena in general and kinesin-driven processes in particular are very specialized processes in cell biology, it is not surprising that few laboratory manuals are available. Motility assays requiring various levels of experimental skill and equipment can already be found in Celis’ laboratory handbook 1xMicrotubule motility assays. Cross, R. : 317–325See all References1, Scholey's Motility Assays 2xScholey, J.M. See all References2 or Methods in Enzymology 3xVallee, R.B. See all References3. But a laboratory manual covering such a wide spectrum of methods dedicated to the study of kinesin and its relatives has, until now, been lacking.Some protocols are quite specialized and require instrumentation that is not easily available to many laboratories. Who, for example, is able to program a digital signal processor for a photonic force microscope, or who can upgrade an electron microscope to a cryo-EM plus UNIX-based data-analysis workstation? These items will probably remain in the hands of a few specialists, but the vast majority of protocols should be of interest for any researcher working on functional or cell-biological problems related to kinesin. Therefore, the next time you wish to perform a specific kinesin experiment, ask your librarian to purchase a copy of Kinesin Protocols. |
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