The Chemical Activities of Bacteria

IN an age long past, biochemistry was the science of food and waste products, the study, it was unkindly suggested, of the letter-box and the dustbin. The limitations of this approach to the chemistry of life were first discarded half a century ago, when intracellular metabolic enzymes were separated intact from the yeast cell. But though the microbiologist may claim that the science of enzymology (like the name) originated in his field, our knowledge of the cellular chemistry of bacteria lagged far behind the rapid progress made with yeast and animal tissues. Only during the last decade have the technical difficulties of extracting intracellular enzymes from the bacterial cell been overcome; at the same time, the usefulness of the washed suspension technique (employing intact cells) has been much enhanced by such tools as the deficient-culture technique and isotope methods. How rapidly the investigators of bacterial metabolism have made up the lost ground will amaze even those readers of Dr. Gale‘s book who are familiar with this field. But the intensive study of individual metabolic processes must not lead to neglect of the larger physiological system of which they are but the component parts. The bacterial cell is more than "a collection of enzymes surrounded by a semipermeable membrane".The Chemical Activities of Bacteria By Dr. Ernest F. Gale. Pp. iv + 200. (London: University Tutorial Press, Ltd., 1947.) 8s. 6d.