Looking at The Small Picture
By Floyd E. Bloom
Sunday, April 13 1997; Page X04
Science writers and scientists have a perverse symbiotic relationship. Without scientists, science writers wouldn't exist, let alone have much to write about. But without science writers of the caliber of The Washington Post's Boyce Rensberger, the meaning of much of what scientists have done would be lost to public understanding. The symbiosis reaches its constructive ideal, however, when writers such as Rensberger catch the zeal of scientific discovery and -- burning to explain it fully, shorn of jargon -- seek out scientists as tutors to explain the complexities. The ability to absorb that knowledge, question it and then test their understanding in translations from science-speak back to plain-speak characterizes this lyrical, modest-sized, but factually dense volume on the marvelous progress that has been made in our understanding of the elegant molecular machinery running within our cells.
For Rensberger, the seductiveness of cell biology began with a hands-on summer physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, Mass. Seeing living cells under microscopes, observing their internal components with special chemicals that increased their optical contrast, and then learning the underlying biochemical operations ignited his interest in a self-education assisted by some of the most distinguished scientists in the field.
One of the features that caught the author's eye in his first excursions by microscopy was the constant motion of the cell's particulate components. He devotes extensive coverage to the molecular makeup of the little motors that underlie this motion, and to how the principles of chemistry and physics that allow these proteins to interact so precisely also illuminate the contraction of muscle, and the multiple precise steps by which dividing cells duplicate and sort out their chromosomes before cell division.
One of the admirable features of this book is the very sparse use of metaphors to explain scientific phenomena. Two are used repeatedly and effectively. Chapter 4, "The Living-Room Cell," introduces readers to a plan by which the relative sizes and shapes of cell components can be appreciated in everyday terms. Imagine an average cell enlarged 300,000 times to the size of an average living room. At that scale, the nucleus -- the compartment of the cell that contains all the genetic information needed to create maintain and ultimately kill the cell -- would be about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. The living-room cell also puts into perspective the various other little devices that cells need to operate: salt- and sugar-exchange mechanisms to provide energy and mineral balance inside, the means by which cells ingest other nutrients they need, and how cells generate the energy "batteries" they need to run by enzymatic conversion of nutrients, all within special energy-producing components with their own genes, the mitochondria.
A second pedagogical metaphor used repeatedly to the reader's advantage is the concept that the body of an organism should be viewed as a "republic of cells" in which "a huge colony of extraordinarily selfless citizens" (the cells) have each forsaken an independent existence to create the self-sustaining individual. This same idea then helps the understanding of what happens when individual cells "revolt" and undergo changes to "pursue renegade causes," escaping from the environments where they were born and worked and establishing colonies in new locations, eventually devoting more and more of their time to replication, becoming cancer. This book also offers one of the most clearly understandable descriptions of the details of what happens when a sperm fertilizes an ovum, eventually (and a lot later than you would think) becoming an embryo. And there's a lot more, including some very cogent remarks about longevity, the inevitability of eventual death, and what science could do about it.
The book is not without its flaws. While the chapters read well in the order in which they are presented, there is inadequate cross-referencing among them. Given its factual density, readers with limited prior knowledge of biology may wonder if a given paragraph that sounds so much like another is the same or if a new concept being revisited. Despite the glossary, a lot of terms remained undefined or obscure ("kinetochore" is never defined yet gets three pages of attention; second messengers are defined on page 67, but the initial explicit mention of first messengers doesn't arrive until page 154. Jacob and Monod are cited for their brilliance, but never connected as they were in life and the Nobel awards). The simple schematic illustrations are very helpful but too few, given the huge numbers of phenomena and facts covered. The biological illustrations need to show the color that caught the author's eye.
My biggest question, arising early in my reading, is for what audience was this book intended? Initially, it seemed to be for non-scientists who want to understand what scientists have done and are doing. This would be a great gift for an adolescent considering a career in medicine or biology -- the book is crammed with great, important, unanswered questions suitable for a thesis or more. However, the more I pondered, the more I thought that the real audience emerged. This book will be extremely useful for scientists who need good examples of how to describe their complicated work simply enough for the interested public to understand. Many more biological narrators of Rensberger's quality are needed to get out the scientific messages. This book is a great education in the powers of ordinary language, poetically arranged to explain, to inspire and to heighten curiosity of non-scientists and scientists alike.
Floyd E. Bloom, a neuroscientist, is chairman of the neuropharmacology department at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and editor-in-chief of Science.
© 1997 The Washington Post Co.
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