It is a strange fact that many modern cell biochemists have a keen interest in biosynthetic processes, such as protein and nucleic biosynthesis or organelle biogenesis, but tend to regard degradative processes merely as irritating reactions that disrupt the flow of synthetic reactions. Historically, the elucidation of catabolic pathways preceded that of anabolic pathways, so that there is also a tendency to regard work on proteases, phospholipases, nucleases, etc., as somewhat "old-fashioned. " It is the great contribution of Professor Luzikov's book to show that, at least in the case of mito...