Waldmann, H., and Jenning, P., Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany, 2004, 230 pp., paperback ISBN 3-527-307778-8, $44.95. This timely and unique book is a graduate level laboratory course on chemical biology. The authors define this as “the development and use of chemistry techniques for the study of biological phenomena.” This rapidly growing discipline focuses on the design and preparation of compounds whose specially selected properties permit their use as probes of specific biological systems. The properties are determined on the basis of the analysis of a particular system or phenomenon so that the chemical biology approach significantly extends and complements the genetics and molecular biology approaches that have come to be so predominant in present day biochemistry. The authors are based at the Department of Chemical Biology in the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany. Waldmann heads the department, whereas Janning is responsible for the practical course that the department offers as part of its graduate program and of an International School of Chemical Biology. They have involved ∼40 of their colleagues to test the 12 experiments, which reflect the department's research interests, that are described in the book. The introductory chapter is a general one which describes the logic and power of this new science at the crossroads of chemistry and biology through seven well illustrated case studies. These are concerned with: the Ras superfamily (and its Rab subfamily) of lipidated GTPases, the binding protein for the immunosuppressant FK506, mechanism-based trapping of protein-DNA complexes, fluorescence-labeled proteins, modulation of cell surface O-linked glycoproteins, and allele-specific inhibition of protein kinases. The experiments that constitute this course are largely based on chemical synthesis, e.g. of oligonucleotides, doubly labeled peptide nucleic acids, an oligonucleotide-streptavidin conjugate, isoprenoid pyrophosphates, vesicles that contain fluorescence quencher and lipidated peptides, biotin-galactose conjugate, α-amino amides, and a biphenyl antibiotic that is active against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. One experiment, on protein ligand design, is performed in silico. With one exception, each experiment is performed over a five-hour period by groups of two or three students. The exception is the analysis of a yeast proteome, which is performed over two such periods. The only experiment that could be widely used in an undergraduate biochemistry laboratory concerns the isolation of potato phosphorylase and its use in amylose synthesis. Instrumentation that is required for several experiments includes equipment for fluorescence spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic spectroscopy, matrix-associated laser desorption ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry (MS), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and HPLC-MS, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, and a DNA synthesizer. Descriptions of experiments follow a general pattern in which a brief theoretical background that includes an abstract and learning objectives is followed by the procedures used by supervisors in preparation for the experiments and those to be followed by the students and concludes with a list of references. Students are frequently warned about hazardous materials that are often used. I found these descriptions to be generally clear but by no means free of spelling and similar (but minor) errors. They are supported by many illustrations mostly of chemical structures and of sequences of reactions in a synthetic procedure. An appendix describes security measures, lists the known risks of many such compounds, and provides remarks about how to deal with them when necessary. This book offers an astonishingly practical glimpse at the role of chemistry and some of the methodology currently used in the production of chemicals for biological investigation and for the manipulation of biological phenomena by specially designed compounds that could also have a function as drugs. The laboratory protocols it provides, although intensive even for students with a good background in chemistry and demanding in manpower and equipment, are models for the laboratory training of the chemically oriented bioscientists who are increasingly required for biological research and for industry.