Description

 

This laboratory manual is written by a team of British and Canadian based academic (and clinical) virologists. It is a useful manual of both well established and novel techniques and is designed to be consulted at the laboratory bench by scientists researching the structure and function of the genomes and gene products of DNA viruses. The techniques covered include; virus genome mapping; sequence analysis; identification and purification of proteins involved in DNA virus replication and transcription; development of DNA virus vectors and chemotherapy of DNA virus infections.

The book fulfils its role as a concise, authoritative and reasonably up to date methods manual. However, its limited analysis of fast moving areas such as real time PCR fluorimetry is inevitable given normal publishing lag times, its most recent references are 1998.

Each section does contain a summary of the advantages and pitfalls of the techniques discussed, but this book is not intended as an introduction or overview of modern molecular virology. Clinicians looking for such a text would be better advised to look elsewhere.