In this book, Khudyakov and Fields present 11 contributions introducing the concept of artificial, rationally designed DNA, and explain how this synthetic DNA may be exploited in order to develop pharmaceutical or medically relevant products. The book is written in a highly interdisciplinary style since artificial DNA can be relevant for all life science disciplines and subdisciplines. Hence, the book combines a variety of aspects from chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, and medicine (mainly immunology). The articles present important applications of artificial DNA including synthetic gene assembly, site-directed mutagenesis, gene amplification, DNA vaccines, recombinant antibodies, screening for genetic and pathogenic diseases, and the development of materials with new biochemical and structural properties.
The book covers basic aspects and principles of designing synthetic genes to produce proteins with desired functions. However, the book is not written in a way that students will easily understand. Moreover, illustrations are rare; some of the articles even lack any illustration. Taken together, the comprehensive way of writing and the lack of illustration exhibit more the style of a handbook suitable for specialized graduate students or researchers who are interested in the idea of synthetic gene exploration and who are working in the field of molecular biology, biochemistry, pharmacy, and related research life science disciplines.
The first part of the book (chapters 1–6) explains methods of oligonucleotide synthesis and the direct biochemical applications of synthetic DNA. Chapter 1 is the most chemical contribution of the whole book since it deals with all basic aspects of the synthesis of oligonucleotides and its automation using the DNA synthesizer. From a chemical point of view, the content of this chapter covers textbook knowledge that can be found in a lot of other review or book articles. However, given that the following chapters comprise a broad variety of applications using synthetic DNA, the first chapter is designated as an introductory overview on what has been achieved in bioorganic synthesis of oligonucleotides. Chapter 2 follows with a very short overview of artificial hybridization probes including RNA, PNA, and molecular beacon probes. The last topic in particular has been considered too briefly, and it would have been better to present some chemical structures of, for example, the fluorescent nucleic acid probes. Chapter 3 covers all aspects of peptide nucleic acid (PNA), an important DNA mimic bearing a pseudopeptide backbone and exhibiting nuclease resistance. Chapter 4 comprises the use of synthetic DNA in amplification methods for genetic material including the polymerase and ligase chain reaction. Chapters 5 and 6 cover the use of artificial nucleic acids in genome profiling and site-directed mutagenesis and conclude the first part of the book. Both articles provide well-written and comprehensive reviews.
The second part of the book (chapters 7–11) describes five more specialized methods of synthetic gene assembly in gene or protein engineering. Chapter 7 focuses on mi-motopes which are peptide mimics that are designed to map conformational epitopes. This chapter is a perfect example of state-of-the-art research in the field of immunology and contains introductory parts about epitopes as antigenic determinants, phage-display peptide and epitope libraries, as well as a description of the application of epitope libraries for the investigation of hepatitis, AIDS, or other viral diseases. Chapter 8 continues with the focus on viruses and describes the application of artificial genes for chimeric virus-like particles. This includes the engineering of a variety of different structural proteins which are part of double-stranded DNA and RNA viruses, retroid viruses and others. Chapter 9, about DNA vaccines, gives first an introduction on the background of immunostimulatory nucleic acids and describes then the potential of DNA immunization and DNA vaccines in the treatment of a variety of different diseases, such as bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections as well as against cancer by augmenting tumor-cell immunogenicity. Chapter 10 focuses on aspects of molecular diagnostics and gives an overview of the progress towards designer diagnostic antigens. In fact, synthetic genes represent the first step for the development for such antigens and could help to overcome the challenge of sequence heterogeneity. Chapter 11, the last in the book, gives an excellent and short review of recombinant antibodies. This chapter describes how to solve the problem of immunogenic monoclonal antibodies and continues with an overview of antibody-derived recombinant molecules, including diabodies, triabodies, minibodies, and others. All important expression and production systems for antibody-derived recombinant molecules, e.g., phage or ribosomal display, yeast, fungi, insects, or mammalian cells, are also summarized in this chapter.
The book has a clear focus and is written by biochemists and molecular biologists working in the field of medicinal and pharmaceutical sciences. It embodies state-of-the-art research. Each of the articles includes a high number of citations. As a result, all relevant primary literature can be found and tracked easily.
Despite the broadness of the biochemical and medical applicability of artificial DNA presented in this book, some important aspects from a more chemical point of view are missing. These include new synthetic DNA constructs, such as locked DNA (LNA), metal-mediated base pairing (M-DNA), artificial DNA bases with or without hydrogen-bonding capabilities, new DNA base pairs for the extension of the genetic code, chromophore-interactions in DNA, and DNA as a supramolecular medium for nanotechnology, and others.
In summary, the book provides a good and comprehensive review of the concepts and use of artificial and synthetic DNA for designing genes and proteins and for the development of pharmaceutically relevant products, such as vaccines, recombinant antibodies, and screening methodologies. It is written clearly from a medical–biochemical point of view for other biochemists and molecular biologists working in the broad field of gene assembly and development.