Molecular biology

Chemistry - The Molecular Nature of Matter and Change

5 stars (My Story with Chemistry and Silberberg) - I am a chemistry major, that does not translate to "I like chemistry" but more along the lines that it was the only feasible premedical degree major. I never did chemistry in High School and suffered tremendously with the thought of majoring in a science that I was unfamiliar with. What if I hated it? What if I wasnt any good at it? these were questions that haunted me prior to starting my degree. When I did commence, I found textbooks to be very costly and wanted the best for my money. I realized that the price of a textbook does not make it good, nor the length of it. In saying so I started my chemistry studies with two books, one known as Basic Concepts of Chemistry by Malone, published by Wiley and the second was this. Chemistry the Molecular Nature of Matter and Change by Silberberg, published by Mcgraw Hill. The first book helped establish an understanding of the fundamentals of chemistry, it was an excellant transition from the layman's english into the scientific paradigm. However when one is doing undergraduate chemistry especially in a premedical degree, it ends up not only being a study but a competition. I found both these books to take me, an Individual who knew absolutely nothing about chemistry without any prior education in the science to someone who is now relaxed even with Organic Chemistry. My liking and my understanding of chemistry came directly from these two books. I still treasure them to this day and would suggest anyone in my position to get these books. I have seen and in detail read over 13 general chemistry books from Cheng to Atkins and even Zumdahl. I would deem these two (Malone and Silberberg) to be the best of all of them. However I do suggest that you peruse through various textbooks in a library prior to buying as an author's writing style matters a lot. Most people who have an issue with Silberberg see him as being too pleonastic however I would think that he gives substan...
McGraw-Hill Science-Engineering-Math :: Science & Chemistry & General :: Science&Mathematics :: Science :: Life Sciences - Biology - Molecular Biology :: Chemistry - General :: Martin Silberberg :: :: Chemistry - The Molecular Nature of Matter and Change

Molecular Cell Biology- Fifth Edition

1 stars (Inferior in every way) - The Alberts text (Molecular Biology of the Cell, Fourth Edition) is superior to this text in every way. It is clearer, more precise, and contains more information. This one manages to make simple concepts become quite difficult. 5 stars (Excellent but starting to get outdated) - Excellent. Hands down the best book out there for cell biology. Gives a thorough look at the exciting unraveling of the cell. Figures are exceptional. However, being now ~3 years old and due to the intense output and growth of scientific literature this book is starting to get outdated. There have been several advances in a number of transport systems (i.e. Nuclear transport and regulation of gene expression). A new edition in the next year or so would hopefully address these issues. 1 stars (Rehash of previous edition to prevent resale.) - The book matches PERFECTLY to the previous edition... with loads of cut and paste of partial paragraphs. The result is that you could never find your way through a class using this edition with the previous edition: curbs the used book market. There is nothing more. No 'cutting edge technology' and minimal new info... not worth a new edition. All the "hard work" of putting together this edition was NOT done by the Authors, but by "hardworking" editors: NOT scientists. It isn't presenting any new science worthy of a new edition... thats just an appeal. The editing may have taken a lot of work but they obviously had a deadline! The combinations of sentences formed for the new edition from sentences edited from this and that chapter of the old edition are grammatical nightmares! The illustrations are also second rate. Why this book is popular must be a source of wonder to the editors. Half baked edition with undeserved popularity. Worse, the language hashed was difficult to begin with. A biologist who studied from this text would be a giggle to have around. ...
W H Freeman :: Science & Biology :: Genetics (non-medical) :: Cellular biology :: Science&Mathematics :: Science :: Molecular biology :: Life Sciences - Cytology :: Life Sciences :: Molecular Cell Biology- Fifth Edition

Concepts of Genetics 7th Edition

5 stars (I used this book for my lectures.) - OK, let me put it simply. I used this book to prepare for my lectures to 2nd year medical undergraduates- and I received outstanding feedback. The students just loved it! 4 stars (A descent book for beginners) - Before making any critics about this book I should stress upon the fact that the authors well deserve a four star rating for this most readable book, both for the writing style and for the contents. Almost everything written is clear, concise and well presented. The captions are of high quality and if you ever buy this book feel sure that you are not wasting your money! I am referring in particular to chapter 16: Genetics of Bacteria and Bacteriophages which in reality is quite tricky but here presented with simple words. You may not have to read it more than once for you will understand it right from the first lecture. For in-depth study though you might need something more advanced! However I did not really appreciate the way the fluctuation test of S.Luria and M.Delbruk was presented nor was the following work of J.Cairns and B.Hall in chapter 14: Gene mutation, DNA repair and Transposable elements. There seems to lack the true essence of it. Furthermore the existence of mutational hotspots is limited to a subsection only of chapter 14 and a few lines on the work of S.Benzer. Even B.Lewin in Genes VII gives a better treatment of mutational hotspots. Finally I would have expected a chapter on Mutations to talk about mutator mutations as possible ways to increase or decrease the spontaneous mutation rate but no such references were made. Despite these few things, if you love genetics or need an introductory course be sure that this book is meant for you! 5 stars (I was taught by the proffesor who wrote the book) - Yup, and the professor gave out many problems in addition to supplementary problems. The book was an easy read but in order to do well in this course you simply need a mind for genetics. ...
Prentice Hall :: Science & Molecular Biology :: Science&Mathematics :: Science :: Life Sciences - Evolution :: Life Sciences - Biology - Molecular Biology :: Life Sciences - Bio :: Concepts of Genetics (7th Edition)

Molecular Biology of the Gene- Fifth Edition

5 stars (Readable and Thorough, An Excellent Reference) - I am a layman with a serious interest in biology. I read science news, especially in Nature and Scientific American, and I often find that I don't have enough background to understand articles at the level at which I want to understand them. I bought this book hoping to get that background, and I wasn't disappointed. For example, once the human genome was sequenced, it appeared that there were far too few genes for an organism as complex as ourselves. But investigation shows that most genes occur in segments and that the messenger RNA must be cut and spliced before the protein can be formed. Often there are two or more ways the RNA may be spliced. So that one gene can specify more than one protein. Another problem is that the genome seemed to consist mostly of sections that don't code for proteins; these were called "junk". But it turns out that some RNA sequences have catalytic and regulatory roles, roles which used to be considered the bailiwick of proteins alone. Articles about topics such as these used to confuse me thoroughly, but after reading this book I find them much clearer. This book benefits from a great many illustrations and I recommend that you go through each one as you would a worked problem in a math text. Observe how the pieces fit together, how a particular group of atoms enhances or inhibits a reaction. The practice will help you to understand other things you will read later. I called this a "reference" for good reason: I assume that I will come across many future articles which will send me back to it to fill in some background. ...
Benjamin Cummings :: Science & Molecular Biology :: Science&Mathematics :: Science :: Molecular genetics :: Molecular Biology :: Life Sciences - Genetics & Genomics :: Life Sciences - :: Molecular Biology of the Gene- Fifth Edition

Essential Cell Biology- Second Edition

4 stars (Pretty Good and Basic) - This text is actually really good for beginners or as a refresher. Full of info and very detailed. 3 stars (Usefull illustrations, but it didn't help much for class) - After taking my first course in cell biology I discovered a number of things about the subject. 1) Cell Biology is a HARD CLASS! In my class, we covered about 18 or so chapters of material. Tests were based mostly on memorization of both relevant and obscure facts as well as many, many molecular processes. For someone that is pressed for time and tries to cram before tests, there will be problems. 2) It is difficult to understand many of the processes in cell biology without some chemistry background. When I took the class, I was also in organic chemistry 2, but that didn't help much. If I could have done it over again, I would actually take Biochemistry before Cell because processes in Cell Biology are explained briefly and mostly independent of the chemistry involved, which forces the student to memorize information without really understand why these processes occur. 3) In general, Biology is becoming more problem based and in order to understand cell, you need to have solve useful questions. Based on the inherent difficulties of Cell Biology that I have mentioned, I don't think that this book did much to bridge any of these learning gaps. The molecular processes were explained briefly which was ok, but since there was so many of them, it was still hard to manage. The chemistry of cell biology in this book is poorly explained. Chemical structures are largely discarded in favor of acronyms. Obvisously, acronyms are favored for the long run, but a firm understanding of the chemical structures needs to be understand first. In my opinion, this book relied too much on acroynms. Finally, the questions in this book were terrible. Some were just inane (Compare signs of life for a rock and a plant) while others were just pointless (Calculate something or the...
Garland Science-Taylor -amp- Francis Group :: Biology :: Life Sciences :: Science&Mathematics :: Science :: Molecular biology :: Life Sciences - Cytology :: Life Sciences - Biology - Molecular Biology :: Life S :: Essential Cell Biology- Second Edition

Molecular Biology of the Cell- Fourth Edition

5 stars (Great, but...) - I ordered this book on somewhat of a lark, and I haven't been disappointed. The material is fascinating; although so complex that even at 1,400 pages it still feels like a summary in some places, particularly the parts about RNA replication (what I'm reading right now). For self learners, it's great. I was expecting to force myself to read this thing, but I just got sucked in, reading it like a novel, although in some places it can get difficult and I find myself needing to re-read a paragraph several times. A few specific criticisms: I wish there was a better cohesion between pictures and the text. Sometimes you need to flip the page over to see the figure they reference in the text, but I'm sure that's a space concern and the book is already 1,400 pages. I'd also like to see specific pointers to papers or other books you could read if you wanted to find out more about a specific thing. Finally, the glossary is a little thin. It doesn't contain a definition for "nucleolus" for example. You might want to get a companion dictionary to go along with the book. I'd rate it more like 4.9 stars if I could. 5 stars (Molecular Biology of the Cell, Fourth Edition) - Although Molecular Biology of the Cell is suitable for specialists, it's not written exclusively for biologists. Amateur readers and those who want to expand their knowledge to one of the most interesting scientific topics, myself included, can still find the book useful and enjoyable. Starting from chapter one, the book makes use of hundreds of illustrations to explain corresponding sections. The fourth edition takes advantage of the new discoveries in genetics by expanding the material provided in previous editions. Six chapters in total have been added to expand the information on molecular genetics. Chapter one, which explains RNA Translation, the Domains of the Living World, Genetic Information in Eucaryotes, among many other things, is quite an interesting opening of ...
Garland Publishing :: Cellular biology :: Science&Mathematics :: Science :: Molecular Biology :: Life Sciences - Cytology :: Life Sciences - Biology - Molecular Biology :: General :: Cyt :: Molecular Biology of the Cell- Fourth Edition