Freshwater turtles and goldfish can survive for several days without oxygen, some diving turtles for several months; hibernating animals can exist without food for long periods; others can survive extreme conditions such as desiccation, freezing, and thawing. These creatures are, in effect, self-sustaining life-support systems, with a mysterious ability to regulate their own metabolisms.

These capabilities raise important questions, which Hochachka and Guppy explore in this seminal new book. What mechanisms turn down (or off) cell metabolism and other cell functions? How does an animal such as an opossum know when to activate mechanisms for slowing or stopping tissue and organ functions? How does it know when to turn them on again? How extensive is metabolic arrest as a defense against harsh environmental conditions? Can we decipher universal principles of metabolic arrest from available data? The lessons to be learned are of potentially great interest to clinicians, because the authors provide a theoretical framework in which to organize an attack on the all-too-practical problem of protecting tissues against hypoxia. Areas that may be influenced include research on cardiac arrest, strokes, acute renal failure, liver ischemia, lung injury, respiratory defense syndrome, claudication, shock, and organ transplant. Investigation of other metabolic arrest mechanisms may be similarly useful in both clinical and agricultural fields.

This is a pioneering book of great use to biomedical/clinical researchers and to biologists, biochemists, and physiologists generally.

All processes that occur in a cell require energy that ultimately derives from the sun. The original processing of light energy by plants, the conversion of this energy into a useable form, its utilisation to do work, and its incorporation into storage molecules comprise the subject of this book. Michael Guppy is a retired Associate Professor of Biochemistry from the University of Western Australia. The book is based on a lecture series on metabolism that was developed over twenty years. It is unique in that energy processing is simplified and clarified by being distilled into a series of recurring concepts and themes. The different metabolic pathways are thus treated not as separate entities, but as interlocking parts of a whole that have a common purpose. This approach enables lessons learned from one pathway to be carried over to subsequent pathways, resulting in a decrease in the amount of new information that is encountered as the book proceeds. In the final chapter we are reminded that although biochemistry may be a strange world to many, it is very much a part of us all. The concepts and themes encountered in the book are applied to the issue of how we burn off energy (lipid stores), and what steps we can take to avoid the disabling and life-threatening affliction of obesity.