Hypertension Mechanisms (review)

the discovery that the oncogenic version differed in only a single nucleotide from the proto-oncogene. Weinberg's serial transformation assay provided a first real glimpse of the genetic basis of cancer and was in fact a variation of the very technique used in 1944 by Avery, MacLeod, and McCarthy to prove that the genetic material is made up of DNA and not proteins. The assay quickly became a widely used method to isolate many other cellular oncogenes. Again, intelligent application of a simple technique to test a simple idea had resulted in a scientific breakthrough . Back in the early 1970s, Alfred Knudson proposed that retinoblastoma, a childhood eye cancer, was caused by the functional inactivation of the two copies of a recessive tumor suppressor gene. This seminal hypothesis has been brought to the genetic level again by the Weinberg group and led to the cloning of the first tumor suppressor gene in 1986, in collaboration with Ted Dryja. Tumor suppressor genes (also called recessive cancer genes or antioncogenes) have added a new dimension to cancer biology. The action of oncogenes and antioncogenes can be regarded as the yin and the yang of tumorigenesis. The identification of the retinoblastoma gene occurred during Natalie Angler 's stay at the Weinberg lab. She has captured these events as an interested eyewitness, while she has reconstructed the history of the unveiling of the oncogenes in the late 1970s and early 1980s through many interviews with the key players. She did an additional stay in Michael Wigler's lab at Cold Spring Harbor . This extensive research, her understanding of the subject, and her writing talent result in a book that is very readable, informative, and hilarious. The book abounds with hype, which is at times silly but makes for pleasant reading. Though the book emphasizes Weinberg's contributions to the oncogene field, it is not an hagiography of Saint Robert and his disciples, and does not omit the many painful incidents and situations that have occurred in the Weinberg lab during the past 10 years (these dark sides of the history of the lab are typical of many labs at the frontier of science). Even the embarrassing story of the cloning of a "metastasis" gene in 1985, which later turned out to be the ras- oncogene again and was misidentified through a double error, is told in the same detail as the many triumphs of the Weinberg group. Natural Obsessions thus offers a balanced view of the history of the Weinberg lab in the search for the oncogenes. Natalie Angier has succeeded in her goal to write about doing science rather than about done science. Peter Mombaerts Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139 Hypertension Mechanisms. By Irvine H. Page. Orlando, FIa.: Grune & Stratton, 1987. Pp. 1,102. $69.50. The field of hypertension is blessed every 10 years with one outstanding new book, a work that documents comprehensively the state of the art—incidentally, 614 I Book Reviews the title of the first chapter in this book. Sir Horace Smirk in the 1950s, Sir George Pickering in the 1960s, Jacques Genest and colleagues in the 1970s, all fathered texts each of which was, in turn, the hypertension Bible of the decade. Irvine Page's Hypertension Mechanisms is a new Bible, but its tenure will exceed a decade. Unlike its predecessors, which ranged over many aspects of hypertension —measurement, epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical consequences, and therapy—Page's book is unique, focusing exclusively on the biological mechanisms governing blood pressure and on the derangements that underlie different forms of hypertension. This focus permits more comprehensive and thorough evaluation of pathogenesis than the earlier works. That it is a single-author book is remarkable, for, as Page states in the preface, "the literature on hypertension has grown at such an explosive rate that few, if any, are able to keep abreast of it." Witness the more than 19,000 references to hypertension in the Medline database for 1988 alone! But, of course, therein lies its strength. The book is the synthesis of more than 50 years of the worldwide literature on the scientific endeavor to understand hypertension by a man who was, for the...