Description: Groundbreaking thinking on how bacterial metabolism is foundational to pathogenesis. Useful for specialists in bacterial pathogenesis and specialists in metabolism as well as molecular biologists, physicians, veterinarians, dentists, graduate and undergraduate students, and laboratory technicians.
Brief description: Tyrrell was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and is married for 29 years to Sharri Conway, an elementary school teacher. They have two children. Tyrrell graduated from Oklahoma State University with a doctorate in Microbiology. He held faculty appointments at the University of Florida, University of Nebraska, Ohio State University, the University of Oklahoma, and currently is Professor and Head of Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Oklahoma State University. Amongst several scientific discoveries Tyrrell is the co-inventor of U.S. Patent number 5,000,000 for genetically engineering E. coli to make biofuels and published the first DNA microarray paper on E. coli. He and Paul Cohen were the first scientists to systematically determine what carbon sources are used by E. coli to colonize the animal intestine. Tyrrell is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology. If he had time, he would read more novels and go fishing more often.
Review Quotes:
One of the issues with being in a postgenomic world is that the puzzles are now more intricate. We can no longer be satisfied with understanding what single genes may do as we are holding entire decrypted genomes in our hands. The same is true for function, or phenotype, or even behavior. In order to help begin unraveling one such convoluted puzzle, Tyrrell Conway and Paul Cohen have put together in their new book a very capable collection of chapters helping us to understand how metabolism interacts with pathogenesis in bacteria. This volume is a welcome marker of our time, laying groundwork for potential future directions in dissecting pathogenesis and disease.
Metabolism and Bacterial Pathogenesis begins with chapters devoted to providing a review of metabolic pathways and pathogenesis itself. From there, readers are treated to a series of chapters that discuss metabolism and pathogenesis in a series of well-known pathogenic organisms, including Borrelia burgdorferi, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and, on a more general level, gram-positive as well as gram-negative bacteria. There is even an entire chapter devoted to oral pathogens and their metabolic needs. In truth, just about anyone with a more than casual interest in microbiology should be able to find a chapter-length treatment of their pathogen of interest with regard to the topics mentioned in the book's title. There should be almost no one who would not both learn something new and interesting in any given chapter, all of which were written by highly regarded researchers. The audience that is most accurately targeted would be a graduate-level course on pathogens. I can see a good number of these chapters becoming standard reading for many such courses.
That being said, there are a few issues with the book. First, and perhaps most strikingly, there is no chapter devoted to metabolomics. Surely, in a publication designed to help understand the connections between pathogenesis and metabolism, a chapter devoted to the --omics study of metabolism is warranted. Unfortunately, Conway and Cohen provide no explanation as to why they chose not to include one. This is, however, the only misstep attributable to the editors, with the remainder all squarely resting with the usually more than capable publisher, ASM Press. In fact, there are a number of publisher-based issues, none of which are catastrophic, but all that certainly should not appear in final print. These include misspelled chapter author names or incorrect order of author's names in chapter page headers. There are figures that are far too small to read without magnification or, in other cases, figures that are oversized. Additionally, there is an odd mix of color and black-and white figures, sometimes even on adjoining pages.
And perhaps most peevish: poor copyediting evidenced by numerous misspelled words and improper punctuation. In recommending Metabolism and Bacterial Pathogenesis, the suggestion is to focus on the content and not be overly concerned with the lower-than-expected fit and finish of the book itself. The content is worth the extra effort.
Volume 91, Number 2
June 2016
--Fabrizio Spagnolo, Applied Biomathematics Inc., Setauket, New York