Introduction to Enzyme and Coenzyme Chemistry

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T. D. H. Bugg, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2004, Second Edition, 304 pp., price £29.99, ISBN: 1-4051-1452-5First published in 1998, Tim Bugg's “Introduction to Enzyme and Coenzyme Chemistry” immediately impacted on the teaching of biological chemistry to chemistry students. For the first time, the fundamental reactions catalysed by enzymes were explained in terms of the mechanisms familiar to the undergraduate and graduate organic chemists in the target audience. This feature helped demystify the subject of enzymology and brought the subject to a wider audience. In the second edition, Bugg has maintained and strengthened this theme, but broadened the subject area to include discussions of radical mechanisms and protein folding.

The book begins with a discussion of the historical aspects of the understanding of enzymes, particularly in the century up to the ‘molecular biology revolution’ of the late 1980s, and leading into the modern era of proteomics and rapid structure elucidation. This is followed by a basic description of the structure and architecture of enzymes and a good discussion of the physical organic chemistry of enzyme catalysis and methods for studying enzyme reactions. These sections give a good basic understanding for undergraduates and are a good jumping off point for more advanced readers who can follow the excellent bibliography in each chapter.

The introductory chapters are then followed by chapters describing the main classes of enzyme reactions – again given in terms of the fundamental mechanistic organic chemistry in each case. In many places these chapters have been updated since the first edition and carry recent examples from the literature. In these chapters the reader will find both the ‘accepted’ mechanisms of enzymes as well, as alternatives where debate in the literature is still active. The discussion is well balanced, and the strong link to mechanism is always present, leading the organic chemist on an easy path. The discussions are supported by very clear mechanistic schemes, and in many cases, renderings of the active sites of relevant enzymes. In this way, the book is superior to many standard biochemistry textbooks which seldom discuss the important details of a reaction in mechanistic or structural detail. The link between enzyme structure and geometry and catalysis is amply demonstrated. Once again, the individual chapters are not meant to be comprehensive, and each chapter has a good bibliography for the interested reader. As well as discussion of the enzyme catalysed reactions, the role of the cofactors is also well discussed, making clear the role played by these groups in more complex chemical mechanisms. A further nice touch is an inclusion of catalysis by non-enzymatic biological systems, such as RNA and catalytic antibodies.

A disappointment of the first edition was the relative lack of good structural depiction of the enzyme active sites under discussion. The second edition has gone a long way to address this by including many enzyme structures and active site depictions. Unfortunately the quality of these diagrams is not as high as one might have wished. Rendered using the widely available programme RASMOL, the diagrams are accessible and should stimulate readers to experiment with visualizing proteins for themselves, but the two-colour scheme used throughout (presumably to keep printing costs down) is not capable of illustrating individual atoms, and the RASMOL generated protein structures are somewhat low-resolution.

The strong link between organic chemistry mechanisms and enzyme mechanisms means that this book is an important resource for anyone involved in teaching biological chemistry. The book is pitched such that it can be used in either undergraduate or postgraduate teaching, and it also offers good bibliographic details for those wishing to delve into the subject more deeply. Its strengths far outweigh the lack of multi-colour printing and this book should become, like its first edition, a recommended textbook for all biological chemistry courses.

Russell J. Cox
School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Cantock's Close, Bristol UK BS8 1TS

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